I'm baffling that I cannot find the differences between these two sets of strings, which look to be exactly the same for me. I checked for white space in between the strings, but no luck. When running below queries in SQL Management Studio, only one of them return results... Please help, thank you.
--return row
SELECT * FROM Vendors WHERE VendorCode = 'SRP 85072B'
--does not return row
SELECT * FROM Vendors WHERE VendorCode = 'SRP 85072B'
--return rows
SELECT * FROM Vendors WHERE VendorCode IN (
'ATT 60197S',
'GMI 98661A')
--does NOT RETURN rows
SELECT * FROM Vendors WHERE VendorCode IN (
'ATT 60197S',
'GMI 98661A')
One of the strings has two consecutive regular spaces, the other has a non breaking space (character 160 decimal 0xA0 hex) followed by a regular space (character 32 decimal 0x20 hex).
You can see this from copying and pasting the strings from here as I have done here https://dbfiddle.uk/?rdbms=sqlserver_2019&fiddle=0dc6ccc48439c3dc27a227aa2dffb4d2
0x4154542020363031393753
0x415454A020363031393753
It could be that your string or the column has special character CR or CRLF, try removing those characters in the comparison:
SELECT *
FROM Vendors
WHERE replace(replace(ltrim(rtrim(VendorCode)), char(13), ''), char(10), '') = replace(replace(ltrim(rtrim('SRP 85072B')), char(13), ''), char(10), '')
This code uses a tally table to split apart the two strings, convert each character to its ascii value, and return the differences.
declare
#string1 nvarchar(200)='zdq%E^&$DGE%^#((',
#string2 nvarchar(200)='zdq%E^&$DGx%^#((';
select ascii(SUBSTRING(#string1, t.n, 1)), t.n from dbo.fnTally(1, len(#string1)) t
except
select ascii(SUBSTRING(#string2, t.n, 1)), t.n from dbo.fnTally(1, len(#string2)) t;
They seem similar if you run the following sql query
DECLARE #first nvarchar(max) = 'SELECT * FROM Vendors WHERE VendorCode = ''SRP 85072B''',
#second nvarchar(max) = 'SELECT * FROM Vendors WHERE VendorCode = ''SRP 85072B'''
IF (#first = #second)
SELECT 'Similar';
ELSE
SELECT 'Not Similar';
If the parameters are coming from the same source you may check using the following query
DECLARE #param nvarchar(max) = 'SRP 85072B'
SELECT * FROM Vendors WHERE VendorCode like '%'+ #param+'%'
Related
I am facing to an issue that I cannot update or replace some characters in my database.
Here is how this text look like in my column when I retrieve it:
As you can see, there is an unknown characters between 'master' and 'degree' which I cannot even paste it here.
I also tried to update and replace it with below code (I cannot paste that two vertical lines here since they are not supported in any browser and I am not sure what they are, Please see the picture above to see what is in my SQL statement).
begin transaction
update gm_desc set projdesc=replace(projdesc,'%â s%','') where projdesc like '%âs%' and proposalno = '15-149-01'
You can see the real SQL Statement here:
I tried to update, or replace it but I cannot do it. The update statement successfully works but I still see that weird special charters. I would be appreciate to help me.
Here's a scalar-valued function which removes all non-alphanumeric characters (preserves spaces) from a string.
Hopefully it helps!
dbfiddle
create function dbo.get_alphanumeric_str
(
#string varchar(max)
)
returns varchar(max)
as
begin
declare #ret varchar(max);
with nums as (
select 1 as n
union all select n+1 from nums
where n < 256
)
select #ret = replace(stuff(
(
select '' + substring(#string, nums.n, 1)
from nums
where patindex('%[^0-9A-Za-z ]%', substring(#string, nums.n,1)) = 0
for xml path('')
), 1, 0, ''
), ' ', ' ')
option (MAXRECURSION 256)
return #ret;
end
Usage
select dbo.get_alphanumeric_str('Helloᶄ âWorld 1234⅊⅐')
Returns: Hello World 1234
How it works
The nums CTE is just to get a list of numbers (you can set the maximum of 256 to a higher value if your strings are longer; n.b. option (MAXRECURSION n) is for this CTE but has to be placed at the query)
The stuff essentially iterates through the string, using the list of numbers above and extracts a substring of length 1; each of these chars are checked if they match the [^0-9A-Za-z ] regex group (0-9 all digits, A-Za-z all letters both lower and upper case, and a single space character)
If they match, patindex() should return 0; i.e. index zero.
Use replace(string, ' ', ' ') for the space character as the xml path returns a special encoding, see this question.
Use a binary collation for accented characters; see this answer
I've got a string like AAAA.BBB.CCCC.DDDD.01.A and I'm looking to manipulate this and end up with AAAA-BBB
I've achieved this by writing this debatable piece of code
declare #string varchar(100) = 'AAAA.BBB.CCCC.DDDD.01.A'
select replace(substring(#string,0,charindex('.',#string)) + substring(#string,charindex('.',#string,CHARINDEX('.',#string)),charindex('.',#string,CHARINDEX('.',#string)+1)-charindex('.',#string)),'.','-')
Is there any other way to achieve this which is more elegant and readable ?
I was looking at some string_split operations, but can't wrap my head around it.
If you are open to some JSON transformations, the following approach is an option. You need to transform the text into a valid JSON array (AAAA.BBB.CCCC.DDDD.01.A is transformed into ["AAAA","BBB","CCCC","DDDD","01","A"]) and get the required items from this array using JSON_VALUE():
Statement:
DECLARE #string varchar(100) = 'AAAA.BBB.CCCC.DDDD.01.A'
SET #string = CONCAT('["', REPLACE(#string, '.', '","'), '"]')
SELECT CONCAT(JSON_VALUE(#string, '$[0]'), '-', JSON_VALUE(#string, '$[1]'))
Result:
AAAA-BBB
Notes: With this approach you can easily access all parts from the input string by index (0-based).
I think this is a little cleaner:
declare #string varchar(100) = 'AAAA.BBB.CCCC.DDDD.01.A'
select
replace( -- replace '.' with '-' (A)
substring(#string, 1 -- in the substring of #string starting at 1
,charindex('.', #string -- and going through 1 before the index of '.'(B)
,charindex('.',#string)+1) -- that is after the first index of the first '.'
-1) -- (B)
,'.','-') -- (A)
Depending on what is in your string you might be able to abuse PARSENAME into doing it. Intended for breaking up names like adventureworks.dbo.mytable.mycolumn it works like this:
DECLARE #x as VARCHAR(100) = 'aaaa.bbb.cccc.ddddd'
SELECT CONCAT( PARSENAME(#x,4), '-', PARSENAME(#x,3) )
You could also look at a mix of STUFF to delete the first '.' and replace with '-' then LEFT the result by the index of the next '.' but it's unlikely to be neater than this or Kevin's proposal
Using string split would likely be as unwieldy:
SELECT CONCAT(MAX(CASE WHEN rn = 1 THEN v END), '-', MAX(CASE WHEN rn = 2 THEN v END))
FROM (
SELECT row_number () over (order by (select 0)) rn, value as v
FROM string_split(#x,'.')
) y WHERE rn IN (1,2)
Because the string is split to rows which then need to be numbered in order to filter and pull the parts you want. This also relies on the strings coming out of string split in the order they were in the original string, which MS do not guarantee will be the case
There's already an answer for this question in SO with a MySQL tag. So I just decided to make your lives easier and put the answer below for SQL Server users. Always happy to see different answers perhaps with a better performance.
Happy coding!
SELECT SUBSTRING(#YourString, 1, LEN(#YourString) - CHARINDEX(' ', REVERSE(#YourString)))
Edit: Make sure #YourString is trimmed first as Alex M has pointed out:
SET #YourString = LTRIM(RTRIM(#YourString))
Just an addition to answers.
The doc for LEN function in MSSQL:
LEN excludes trailing blanks. If that is a problem, consider using the DATALENGTH (Transact-SQL) function which does not trim the string. If processing a unicode string, DATALENGTH will return twice the number of characters.
The problem with the answers here is that trailing spaces are not accounted for.
SELECT SUBSTRING(#YourString, 1, LEN(#YourString) - CHARINDEX(' ', REVERSE(#YourString)))
As an example few inputs for the accepted answer (above for reference), which would have wrong results:
INPUT -> RESULT
'abcd ' -> 'abc' --last symbol removed
'abcd 123 ' -> 'abcd 12' --only removed only last character
To account for the above cases one would need to trim the string (would return the last word out of 2 or more words in the phrase):
SELECT SUBSTRING(RTRIM(#YourString), 1, LEN(#YourString) - CHARINDEX(' ', REVERSE(RTRIM(LTRIM(#YourString)))))
The reverse is trimmed on both sides, that is to account for the leading as well as trailing spaces.
Or alternatively, just trim the input itself.
DECLARE #Sentence VARCHAR(MAX) = 'Hi This is Pavan Kumar'
SELECT SUBSTRING(#Sentence, 1, CHARINDEX(' ', #Sentence) - 1) AS [First Word],
REVERSE(SUBSTRING(REVERSE(#Sentence), 1,
CHARINDEX(' ', REVERSE(#Sentence)) - 1)) AS [Last Word]
DECLARE #String VARCHAR(MAX) = 'One two three four'
SELECT LEFT(#String,LEN(#String)-CHARINDEX(' ', REVERSE(#String),0)+1)
All the answers so far are actually about removing a character, not a word as the OP wanted.
In my case I was building a dynamic SQL statement with UNION'd SELECT statements and wanted to remove the last UNION:
DECLARE #sql NVARCHAR(MAX) = ''
/* populate #sql with something like this:
SELECT 1 FROM dbo.T1 WHERE condition
UNION
SELECT 1 FROM dbo.T2 WHERE condition
UNION
SELECT 1 FROM dbo.T3 WHERE condition
UNION
SELECT 1 FROM dbo.T4 WHERE condition
UNION
*/
-- remove the last UNION
SET #sql = SUBSTRING(#sql, 1, LEN(#sql) - PATINDEX(REVERSE('%UNION%'), REVERSE(#sql)) - LEN('UNION'))
SELECT LEFT(username , LEN(json_path) - CHARINDEX('/', REVERSE(username ))+1)
FROM Login_tbl
UPDATE Login_tbl
SET username = LEFT(username , LEN(json_path) - CHARINDEX('/', REVERSE(username ))+1)
DECLARE #String VARCHAR(MAX) = 'One two three four'
SELECT LEFT(#String,LEN(#String)-CHARINDEX(' ', REVERSE(#String),0)+1)
I have a table with a couple thousand rows. The description and summary fields are NTEXT, and sometimes have non-ASCII chars in them. How can I locate all of the rows with non ASCII characters?
I have sometimes been using this "cast" statement to find "strange" chars
select
*
from
<Table>
where
<Field> != cast(<Field> as varchar(1000))
First build a string with all the characters you're not interested in (the example uses the 0x20 - 0x7F range, or 7 bits without the control characters.) Each character is prefixed with |, for use in the escape clause later.
-- Start with tab, line feed, carriage return
declare #str varchar(1024)
set #str = '|' + char(9) + '|' + char(10) + '|' + char(13)
-- Add all normal ASCII characters (32 -> 127)
declare #i int
set #i = 32
while #i <= 127
begin
-- Uses | to escape, could be any character
set #str = #str + '|' + char(#i)
set #i = #i + 1
end
The next snippet searches for any character that is not in the list. The % matches 0 or more characters. The [] matches one of the characters inside the [], for example [abc] would match either a, b or c. The ^ negates the list, for example [^abc] would match anything that's not a, b, or c.
select *
from yourtable
where yourfield like '%[^' + #str + ']%' escape '|'
The escape character is required because otherwise searching for characters like ], % or _ would mess up the LIKE expression.
Hope this is useful, and thanks to JohnFX's comment on the other answer.
Here ya go:
SELECT *
FROM Objects
WHERE
ObjectKey LIKE '%[^0-9a-zA-Z !"#$%&''()*+,\-./:;<=>?#\[\^_`{|}~\]\\]%' ESCAPE '\'
It's probably not the best solution, but maybe a query like:
SELECT *
FROM yourTable
WHERE yourTable.yourColumn LIKE '%[^0-9a-zA-Z]%'
Replace the "0-9a-zA-Z" expression with something that captures the full ASCII set (or a subset that your data contains).
Technically, I believe that an NCHAR(1) is a valid ASCII character IF & Only IF UNICODE(#NChar) < 256 and ASCII(#NChar) = UNICODE(#NChar) though that may not be exactly what you intended. Therefore this would be a correct solution:
;With cteNumbers as
(
Select ROW_NUMBER() Over(Order By c1.object_id) as N
From sys.system_columns c1, sys.system_columns c2
)
Select Distinct RowID
From YourTable t
Join cteNumbers n ON n <= Len(CAST(TXT As NVarchar(MAX)))
Where UNICODE(Substring(TXT, n.N, 1)) > 255
OR UNICODE(Substring(TXT, n.N, 1)) <> ASCII(Substring(TXT, n.N, 1))
This should also be very fast.
I started with #CC1960's solution but found an interesting use case that caused it to fail. It seems that SQL Server will equate certain Unicode characters to their non-Unicode approximations. For example, SQL Server considers the Unicode character "fullwidth comma" (http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/ff0c/index.htm) the same as a standard ASCII comma when compared in a WHERE clause.
To get around this, have SQL Server compare the strings as binary. But remember, nvarchar and varchar binaries don't match up (16-bit vs 8-bit), so you need to convert your varchar back up to nvarchar again before doing the binary comparison:
select *
from my_table
where CONVERT(binary(5000),my_table.my_column) != CONVERT(binary(5000),CONVERT(nvarchar(1000),CONVERT(varchar(1000),my_table.my_column)))
If you are looking for a specific unicode character, you might use something like below.
select Fieldname from
(
select Fieldname,
REPLACE(Fieldname COLLATE Latin1_General_BIN,
NCHAR(65533) COLLATE Latin1_General_BIN,
'CustomText123') replacedcol
from table
) results where results.replacedcol like '%CustomText123%'
My previous answer was confusing UNICODE/non-UNICODE data. Here is a solution that should work for all situations, although I'm still running into some anomalies. It seems like certain non-ASCII unicode characters for superscript characters are being confused with the actual number character. You might be able to play around with collations to get around that.
Hopefully you already have a numbers table in your database (they can be very useful), but just in case I've included the code to partially fill that as well.
You also might need to play around with the numeric range, since unicode characters can go beyond 255.
CREATE TABLE dbo.Numbers
(
number INT NOT NULL,
CONSTRAINT PK_Numbers PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (number)
)
GO
DECLARE #i INT
SET #i = 0
WHILE #i < 1000
BEGIN
INSERT INTO dbo.Numbers (number) VALUES (#i)
SET #i = #i + 1
END
GO
SELECT *,
T.ID, N.number, N'%' + NCHAR(N.number) + N'%'
FROM
dbo.Numbers N
INNER JOIN dbo.My_Table T ON
T.description LIKE N'%' + NCHAR(N.number) + N'%' OR
T.summary LIKE N'%' + NCHAR(N.number) + N'%'
and t.id = 1
WHERE
N.number BETWEEN 127 AND 255
ORDER BY
T.id, N.number
GO
-- This is a very, very inefficient way of doing it but should be OK for
-- small tables. It uses an auxiliary table of numbers as per Itzik Ben-Gan and simply
-- looks for characters with bit 7 set.
SELECT *
FROM yourTable as t
WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT *
FROM msdb..Nums as NaturalNumbers
WHERE NaturalNumbers.n < LEN(t.string_column)
AND ASCII(SUBSTRING(t.string_column, NaturalNumbers.n, 1)) > 127)
I've got a column in a database table (SQL Server 2005) that contains data like this:
TQ7394
SZ910284
T r1534
su8472
I would like to update this column so that the first two characters are uppercase. I would also like to remove any spaces between the first two characters. So T q1234 would become TQ1234.
The solution should be able to cope with multiple spaces between the first two characters.
Is this possible in T-SQL? How about in ANSI-92? I'm always interested in seeing how this is done in other db's too, so feel free to post answers for PostgreSQL, MySQL, et al.
Here is a solution:
EDIT: Updated to support replacement of multiple spaces between the first and the second non-space characters
/* TEST TABLE */
DECLARE #T AS TABLE(code Varchar(20))
INSERT INTO #T SELECT 'ab1234x1' UNION SELECT ' ab1234x2'
UNION SELECT ' ab1234x3' UNION SELECT 'a b1234x4'
UNION SELECT 'a b1234x5' UNION SELECT 'a b1234x6'
UNION SELECT 'ab 1234x7' UNION SELECT 'ab 1234x8'
SELECT * FROM #T
/* INPUT
code
--------------------
ab1234x3
ab1234x2
a b1234x6
a b1234x5
a b1234x4
ab 1234x8
ab 1234x7
ab1234x1
*/
/* START PROCESSING SECTION */
DECLARE #s Varchar(20)
DECLARE #firstChar INT
DECLARE #secondChar INT
UPDATE #T SET
#firstChar = PATINDEX('%[^ ]%',code)
,#secondChar = #firstChar + PATINDEX('%[^ ]%', STUFF(code,1, #firstChar,'' ) )
,#s = STUFF(
code,
1,
#secondChar,
REPLACE(LEFT(code,
#secondChar
),' ','')
)
,#s = STUFF(
#s,
1,
2,
UPPER(LEFT(#s,2))
)
,code = #s
/* END PROCESSING SECTION */
SELECT * FROM #T
/* OUTPUT
code
--------------------
AB1234x3
AB1234x2
AB1234x6
AB1234x5
AB1234x4
AB 1234x8
AB 1234x7
AB1234x1
*/
UPDATE YourTable
SET YourColumn = UPPER(
SUBSTRING(
REPLACE(YourColumn, ' ', ''), 1, 2
)
)
+
SUBSTRING(YourColumn, 3, LEN(YourColumn))
UPPER isn't going to hurt any numbers, so if the examples you gave are completely representative, there's not really any harm in doing:
UPDATE tbl
SET col = REPLACE(UPPER(col), ' ', '')
The sample data only has spaces and lowercase letters at the start. If this holds true for the real data then simply:
UPPER(REPLACE(YourColumn, ' ', ''))
For a more specific answer I'd politely ask you to expand on your spec, otherwise I'd have to code around all the other possibilities (e.g. values of less than three characters) without knowing if I was overengineering my solution to handle data that wouldn't actually arise in reality :)
As ever, once you've fixed the data, put in a database constraint to ensure the bad data does not reoccur e.g.
ALTER TABLE YourTable ADD
CONSTRAINT YourColumn__char_pos_1_uppercase_letter
CHECK (ASCII(SUBSTRING(YourColumn, 1, 1)) BETWEEN ASCII('A') AND ASCII('Z'));
ALTER TABLE YourTable ADD
CONSTRAINT YourColumn__char_pos_2_uppercase_letter
CHECK (ASCII(SUBSTRING(YourColumn, 2, 1)) BETWEEN ASCII('A') AND ASCII('Z'));
#huo73: yours doesn't work for me on SQL Server 2008: I get 'TRr1534' instead of 'TR1534'.
update Table set Column = case when len(rtrim(substring (Column , 1 , 2))) < 2
then UPPER(substring (Column , 1 , 1) + substring (Column , 3 , 1)) + substring(Column , 4, len(Column)
else UPPER(substring (Column , 1 , 2)) + substring(Column , 3, len(Column) end
This works on the fact that if there is a space then the trim of that part of string would yield length less than 2 so we split the string in three and use upper on the 1st and 3rd char. In all other cases we can split the string in 2 parts and use upper to make the first two chars to upper case.
If you are doing an UPDATE, I would do it in 2 steps; first get rid of the space (RTRIM on a SUBSTRING), and second do the UPPER on the first 2 chars:
// uses a fixed column length - 20-odd in this case
UPDATE FOO
SET bar = RTRIM(SUBSTRING(bar, 1, 2)) + SUBSTRING(bar, 3, 20)
UPDATE FOO
SET bar = UPPER(SUBSTRING(bar, 1, 2)) + SUBSTRING(bar, 3, 20)
If you need it in a SELECT (i.e. inline), then I'd be tempted to write a scalar UDF