Blank Space in every row of table SQL - sql

Question

Hello i have a table with rows
and i was doing a simple
select from table where column ='string'
and it gives me back no result, but when i use:
select from table where column ='%string%'
it gives me the row that exist in my table,
then i did a select * from table and noticed that there is a blank space before my rows:
Image of my SQL result
If you look closely theres a space at the beginning of the second row, and only in the first row theres no blank space.
so i thought it was a simple white space at the beggining but when i tried using this:
SELECT LTRIM(RTRIM(MATERIAL)) FROM table
nothing happened.
then i tried to copy the result of my
select * from table
to Excel and noticed this:
Excel paste from SQL
my 2nd row got splitted in 2 rows right at the start of the column 'material', so the thing i thught it was a blank space its something like a jump line.
i have never had this problem before or seen this before.

Answer 1

Larnu has commented how to remove all the linebreaks from the data. Here are some other things that could also work, and slightly differently depending on the effect you want:
--trim everything that is not a number or letter off the left hand side only
UPDATE table SET material = SUBSTRING(material, PATINDEX(material, '[0-9a-z]', 99999)
--convert all linebreaks to spaces and trim off the left and right spaces
UPDATE table SET material = RTRIM(LTRIM(REPLACE(material, CHAR(10), ' ')))
Larnu's SQL isn't wrong, it'll just remove every line break anywhere, which may cause more formatting disruption than is wanted. I'd be tempted to replace all the linebreaks with spaces, as two words that are separated by a line break would remain separated by a space rather than become one word if the space was removed
some
word
-> some word (if you replace linebreak with space)
-> someword (if you replace linebreak with nothing)
If all you want is to remove linebreaks from the left side of the field, the patindex method will search the field for the first occurrence of a numbe rof a letter, and return the index, then substring will cut everything from that index for a length of 99999 (use a bigger number if your field is longer). This has the effect of removing only linebreaks at the start of the field
As to how it happened, whoever inserted the data, or the data import program, made some mistakes when it was cutting up the data. Perhaps it was a Windows style text file, whose line endings are CR LF (ascci 13 followed by 10), and the program that did the import decided to cut the file up based on the 13 only, leaving behind the 10 to become "part of" the material field:
this,is,my,data1<13><10>this,is,my,data2<13><10>
//now lets cut it up into 2 records, based on using <13> only to denote the end of line:
record 1= this,is,my,data1
record 2= <10>this,is,my,data2
The program just sees a stream of bytes, it is we humans that interpret "lines". If the program treats 13 as the separator, then all the 10s get left behind as part of the data that gets inserted. The very first record in the file won't have 13/10 (crlf) before it because it's the first line, so one of your rows (the one with ascii (49)) won't suffer this problem
You could "cure" the bad data with a trigger upon insert:
CREATE TRIGGER prevent_bad_data
ON yourtable
INSTEAD OF INSERT
AS
BEGIN
INSERT INTO yourtable(somecolumn,othercolumn,material)
SELECT foo,
bar,
LTRIM(REPLACE(material, CHAR(10), ' '))
FROM Inserted
END
Or you could program the db to reject bad rows and fix the tool that is inserting the bad data:
ALTER TABLE yourtable
ADD CONSTRAINT prevent_bad_material
CHECK material LIKE '[0-9a-z]%'; --check it starts with a number or letter
Edit: though having seen your updated question with screenshots, the material column really should be a number, not a varchar type, then this wouldn't happen