MySQL Logic issue using 'Between' to calculate coordinates - mysql

Question

I have a table that contains a list of stores, with Latitude and Longitude.
I doing the following query:
SELECT store_name, latitude FROM (`stores`)
WHERE (latitude BETWEEN '-1' AND '-12')
The Result:
"BELEM UMARIZAL" "-1.4454262"
"BELEM NAZARE DUQUE" "-1.454061"
"BELEM SUPERCENTER NAZARE" "-1.4595652"
"BELEM BATISTA CAMPOS" "-1.459802"
"ARACAJU" "-10.9336128"
"BELEM DOMINGOS MARREIROS" "-1.4443628"
"PALMAS " "-10.178152"
"SINOP" "-11.8573162"
"ARACAJU JARDINS" "-10.942702"
SELECT store_name, latitude FROM (`stores`)
WHERE store_name like '%RIO BRANCO%'
The Result:
"RIO BRANCO" "-9.9462713"
"RIO BRANCO AVIÁRIO" "-9.965754700000002"
Why these stores are not in the first result?
What I am missing?
Best Regards!

Answer 1

Presumably, you are storing the values as strings not as numbers. Hence, the comparisons are done as strings. One way to fix this is to use silent conversion:
SELECT store_name, latitude
FROM stores
WHERE latitude + 0 BETWEEN -12 AND -1;
However, if you want to treat the values as numbers, you should store them as numbers. I would recommend DECIMAL(10, 6).
Note:
As originally written, the expression:
WHERE latitude + 0 BETWEEN -1 AND -12
would return no rows, because -1 is larger than -12 and the operands to BETWEEN should be in order. However, do note that it does work with strings . . . further indicating the difference between string and numeric comparisons.