title: Entity Framework: where field starts with number
body: <p>I'm using MVC3 with Entity Framework 4.1 and I've got a grid that is paged by the first character of the company name. I have it working great but some companies start with a number. I'm using the following LINQ query to get the companies starting with the selected number, but how can I select those starting with a number?</p>
  
  <pre><code>    var b = (from c in dbContext.Companies
               where c.CompanyName.StartsWith(selectedCharacter)
               select c)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I've tried: </p>
  
  <pre><code> where char.IsNumber(l.CompanyName[0]) 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But,  I get an error because it doesn't know how to convert it to SQL.</p>
  
  <p>Edit: I know I could just do .CompanyName.StartsWith("1") || .CompanyName.StartsWith("2"), etc.. Is there a better way?
  .
  Any Ideas?</p>