Add column with substring of other column in SQL (Snowflake) - sql

Question

I feel like this should be simple but I'm relatively unskilled in SQL and I can't seem to figure it out. I'm used to wrangling data in python (pandas) or Spark (usually pyspark) and this would be a one-liner in either of those. Specifically, I'm using Snowflake SQL, but I think this is probably relevant to a lot of flavors of SQL.
Essentially I just want to trim the first character off of a specific column. More generally, what I'm trying to do is replace a column with a substring of the same column. I would even settle for creating a new column that's a substring of an existing column. I can't figure out how to do any of these things.
On obvious solution would be to create a temporary table with something like
CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE tmp_sub AS
SELECT id_col, substr(id_col, 2, 10) AS id_col_sub FROM table1
and then join it back and write a new table
CREATE TABLE table2 AS
SELECT
b.id_col_sub as id_col,
a.some_col1, a.some_col2, ...
FROM table1 a
JOIN tmp_sub b
ON a.id_col = b.id_col
My tables have roughly a billion rows though and this feels extremely inefficient. Maybe I'm wrong? Maybe this is just the right way to do it? I guess I could replace the CREATE TABLE table2 AS... to INSERT OVERWRITE INTO table1 ... and at least that wouldn't store an extra copy of the whole thing.
Any thoughts and ideas are most welcome. I come at this humbly from the perspective of someone who is baffled by a language that so many people seem to have mastery over.

Answer 1

I'm not sure the exact syntax/functions in Snowflake but generally speaking there's a few different ways of achieving this.
I guess the general approach that would work universally is using the SUBSTRING function that's available in any database.
Assuming you have a table called Table1 with the following data:
+-------+-----------------------------------------+
Code | Desc
+-------+-----------------------------------------+
0001 | 1First Character Will be Removed
0002 | xCharacter to be Removed
+-------+-----------------------------------------+
The SQL code to remove the first character would be:
select SUBSTRING(Desc,2,len(desc)) from Table1
Please note that the "SUBSTRING" function may vary according to different databases. In Oracle for example the function is "SUBSTR". You just need to find the Snowflake correspondent.
Another approach that would work at least in SQLServer and MySQL would be using the "RIGHT" function
select RIGHT(Desc,len(Desc) - 1) from Table1
Based on your question I assume you actually want to update the actual data within the table. In that case you can use the same function above in an update statement.
update Table1 set Desc = SUBSTRING(Desc,2,len(desc))

Answer 2

You didn't try this?
UPDATE tableX
SET columnY = substr(columnY, 2, 10 ) ;
-Paul-

Answer 3

There is no need to specify the length, as is evidenced from the following simple test harness:
SELECT $1
,SUBSTR($1, 2)
,RIGHT($1, -2)
FROM VALUES
('abcde')
,('bcd')
,('cdef')
,('defghi')
,('e')
,('fg')
,('')
;
Both expressions here - SUBSTR(<col>, 2) and RIGHT(<col>, -2) - effectively remove the first character of the <col> column value.
As for the strategy of using UPDATE versus INSERT OVERWRITE, I do not believe that there will be any difference in performance or outcome, so I might opt for the UPDATE since it is simpler. So, in conclusion, I would use:
UPDATE tableX
SET columnY = SUBSTR(columnY, 2)
;