I have a table which have columns and they have data as comma separated
i used replace to replace that comma with space and updated the table, now due to some incompatibility i had to revert the change and i missed to take backup
so my columns which were replaced have spaces like this
The S.T.A.B.L.E.Manual 6th Ed
see the space between Manual and 6th
i want it should go back to this
The S.T.A.B.L.E. Manual, 6th Ed
You should be careful, but you can do:
update t
set col = replace(col, ' ', ', ')
where col like '% %';
This does not handle the space before "Manual". That is not in your description of the problem.
Related
I have a table where I have a ColumnA which has data with white spaces and special characters. I want to generate ColumnB with the data from ColumnA with the removal of white spaces and special characters.
For example, ColumnA has values like:
N/A
#email
Hot-topic
#sql#%
White paper.
I want a new column with values:
NA
email
HotTopic
sql
Whitepaper
I tried below SQL in SSMS, but it is not working completely. Could someone help me out?
SELECT code,
REPLACE(REPLACE(code, TRIM(TRANSLATE(code,'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',' '))
,'') ,' ','')
FROM SAMP
It is not working for the record with value: #sql#%
Added as a wiki answer in order to retain the comment made by #lptr. Query by #lptr explanation mine (#DaleK).
Your attempt was close, but only worked for single characters... the one that failed was because you had multiple characters that needed replacing and once you remove the white space they are all next to each other and don't match the original string anymore.
This answer cleverly replaces all the letter characters with a "*" using translate as step 1, then using translate again on the original column value, replaces all the non-letter characters with a "*" as step 2, then finally replaces all "*" characters with an empty string.
Note also the use of replication to avoid typing the same character in multiple times.
create table samp(code varchar(50));
insert into samp(code)
values
('N/A'),
('#email'),
('Hot-topic'),
('#sql#%'),
('White paper. ');
select s.code, n.nonletters, l.letters
from samp as s
cross apply (values(translate(s.code, 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz', replicate('*', 26)))) as n (nonletters)
cross apply (values(replace(translate(s.code, n.nonletters, replicate('*', len(n.nonletters+'.')-1)), '*', ''))) as l (letters);
I need to clean up some records in an SQL table. Somehow the middle initial was placed in front of some last names in the last name field.
The table looks like this:
EmplyID last_name_field
123 A Smith
456 Jones
789 J Gillum
Not all of the records have a middle initial and space in front of them. I can't use TRIM to take away the first two characters in each of the records because it would mess up the ones whose last names where correctly imported. Is there a way to remove the first character and space for the only the records that have the middle initial?
Thanks in advance
Very simple solution. Just remove everything before the space. I was on the right track with TRIM instead use RIGHT and LEN
update TABLE_NAME
Set COLUMN_NAME = RIGHT(COLUMN_NAME, LEN(COLUMN_NAME) - CHARINDEX(' ', COLUMN_NAME))
where CHARINDEX(' ', COLUMN_NAME) > 0
that will sounds stupid, but I have a table with names, those names may finish with white space or may not. E.g. I have name ' dummy ', but even if in the query I write only ' dummy' it will find the record ' dummy '. Can I fix it somehow?
SELECT *
FROM MYTABLE where NAME=' dummy'
Thanks
This is how SQL works (except Oracle), when you compare two strings the shorter one will be padded with blanks to the length of th 2nd string.
If you really need to consider trailings blanks you can switch to LIKE which doesn't follow that rule:
SELECT *
FROM MYTABLE where NAME LIKE ' dummy'
Of course, you better clean your data during load.
There's only one thing which is worse than trailing spaces, leading spaces (oh, wait a minute, you got them, too).
How would i go about constructing a query, that would return all material numbers that have a "blank white space" either BEFORE or AFTER the number string? We are exporting straight from SSMS to excel and we see the problem in the spreadsheet. If i could return all of the material numbers with spaces.. i could go in and edit them or do a replace to fix this issue prior to exporting! (the mtrl numbers are imported in via a windows application that users upload an excel template to. This template has all of this data and sometimes they place in spaces in or after the material number). The query we have used to work but now it does not return anything, but upon export we identify these problems you see highlighted in the screenshot (left screenshot) and then query to find that mtrl # in the table (right screenshot). And indeed, it has a space before the 1.
Currently the query we use looks like:
SELECT Mtrl
FROM dbo.Source
WHERE Mtrl LIKE '% %'
Since you are getting the data from a query, you should just have that query remove any potential spaces using LTRIM and RTRIM:
LTRIM(RTRIM([MTRL]))
Keep in mind that these two commands remove only spaces, not tabs or returns or other white-space characters.
Doing the above will make sure that the data for the entire set of data is fine, whether or not you find it and/or fix it.
Or, since you are copying-and-pasting from the Results Grid into Excel, you can just CONVERT the value to a number which will naturally remove any spaces:
SELECT CONVERT(INT, ' 12 ');
Returns:
12
So you would just use:
CONVERT(INT, [MRTL])
Now, if you want to find the data that has anything that is not a digit in it, you would use this:
SELECT Mtrl
FROM dbo.Source
WHERE [Mtrl] LIKE '%[^0-9]%'; -- any single non-digit character
If the issue is with non-space white-space characters, you can find out which ones they are via the following (to find them at the beginning instead of at the end, change the RIGHT to be LEFT):
;WITH cte AS
(
SELECT UNICODE(RIGHT([MTRL], 1)) AS [CharVal]
FROM dbo.Source
)
SELECT *
FROM cte
WHERE cte.[CharVal] NOT BETWEEN 48 AND 57 -- digits 0 - 9
AND cte.[CharVal] <> 32; -- space
And you can fix in one shot using the following, which removes regular spaces (char 32 via LTRIM/RTRIM), tabs (char 9), and non-breaking spaces (char 160):
UPDATE src
SET src.[Mtrl] = REPLACE(
REPLACE(
LTRIM(RTRIM(src.[Mtrl])),
CHAR(160),
''),
CHAR(9),
'')
FROM dbo.Source src
WHERE src.[Mtrl] LIKE '%[' -- find rows with any of the following characters
+ CHAR(9) -- tab
+ CHAR(32) -- space
+ CHAR(160) -- non-breaking space
+ ']%';
Here I used the same WHERE condition that you have since if there can't be any spaces then it doesn't matter if you check both ends or for any at all (and maybe it is faster to have a single LIKE instead of two).
I have a table of common words that are used in sentences (i.e. A, the, and, where, etc...)
What I want to do is loop through all those words and strip them out of the descriptions that people have entered to attempt to generate common keywords or tags. But I can't use replace because replace will remove any instance of the common word regardless of whether it is only a couple of letters that make up a larger word. For instance:
I want to replace A in the description. Now obviously a lot of words contain the letter a. So all those A's will be stripped from the words. I don't want that. I only want it when A is used a a whole word. I can figure this out using regular expressions but was wondering if there was anyway to do this in SQL without having to resort to CLR proc.
Maybe I am missing something but I couldn't seem to find an easy way to do this without having to write some specific scenarios like: word plus space before, word plus space after, word plus period after, etc... I don't think that is the best way.
For quick and dirty, I used to slosh through the various SQL functions PATINDEX, LEFT, RIGHT and LIKE to do this sort of thing. For one-time data prep, I export to something like Excel and eyeball it.
A good approach also is to create a new StringSubstitutionTable with two columns SOURCESTRING and TARGETSTRING and run a replace function to replace the SOURCESTRING with the TARGETSTRING on the joined table. This is cool because you can just add substitution entries as needed.
You can try nesting the replaces for each word you would like to replace. For example:
UPDATE TableName
SET ColumnName = REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(TableName.ColumnName,' a ',' '),' the ',' '),' and ',' '), ' ', ' ')
Let me know if this is what you were looking for.
Here is they way I did something similar to what you are trying to do.
During your replace action...
Append a space before and after the common word.
Append a space before and after the description.
Let's suppose you want to remove the CommonWord "A" from the Description.
Description: "A good phrase never starts with A or ends with A"
CommonWord: "A"
Update TableName
Set Description =
LTRIM(RTRIM(Replace(' ' + Description + ' ', ' ' + CommonWord + ' ', ' ')))
This lets you delete all whole words that equal 'A'. Because you are replacing ' A ' with a space you need to LTRIM RTRIM to remove any leading or trailing spaces.
You could also do this in two steps:
--
-- Step 1 Loop through all common words removing them
--
Update TableName
Set Description = Replace(' ' + Description + ' ', ' ' + CommonWord + ' ', ' ')
--
-- Step 2 Unconditionally Trim all Descriptions
--
Update TableName
Set Description = LTRIM(RTIM(Description))