How to get the middle word using Substring via Charindex of Second Position? - sql

Question

Basically what I am trying to do is that I want to get the middle word, using the second occurrence of the same character (on this case, dash "-").
This is the sample input:
declare #word nvarchar(max)
set #word = 'Technical Materials - Conversion - Team Dashboard'
There are three parts on this sentence, and they are divided by '-' dash line.
The first part is 'Technical Materials' which I am able to get using:
SELECT LTRIM(RTRIM(SUBSTRING(#word, 0, CHARINDEX('-', #word, 0))))
The last set was 'Team Dashboard' which I am able to get using:
SELECT CASE WHEN LEN(#word) - LEN(REPLACE(#word, '-', '')) = 1
THEN NULL
ELSE
RIGHT(#word,CHARINDEX('-', REVERSE(#word))-1)
END
The problem was, I am having a hard time getting the middle words which is 'Conversion' in this example.

Answer 1

If the format is fixed, you can use PARSENAME to achieve your expectation:
DECLARE #Word AS NVARCHAR(MAX) = 'Technical Materials - Conversion - Team Dashboard'
SELECT PARSENAME(REPLACE(#Word, '-', '.'), 2)
if you want to trim the extra spaces, then:
SELECT LTRIM(RTRIM(PARSENAME(REPLACE(#Word, '-', '.'), 2)))

Answer 2

Try this query:
SELECT
SUBSTRING(#word,
CHARINDEX('-', #word) + 2,
CHARINDEX('-', #word, CHARINDEX('-', #word) + 1) -
CHARINDEX('-', #word) - 3)
FROM yourTable
The general strategy here is to use SUBSTRING(), which requires the starting and ending positions of the middle string in question. We can use CHARINDEX to find both the first and second dash in the string. From this, we can compute the positions of the middle substring we want.
Demo here:
Rextester

Answer 3

This will find the text between the first 2 occurrences of '-'
DECLARE #word nvarchar(max)
SET #word = 'Technical Materials - Conversion - Team Dashboard'
SELECT SUBSTRING(x, 0, charindex('-', x))
FROM (values(stuff(#word, 1, charindex('-', #word), ''))) x(x)
This will find the middle element. In case of an even number of elements it will pick the first of the 2 middle elements
DECLARE #word nvarchar(max)
SET #word = 'Technical Materials - Conversion - Team Dashboard'
;WITH CTE(txt, rn, cnt) as
(
SELECT
t.c.value('.', 'VARCHAR(2000)'),
row_number() over (order by (select 1)), count(*) over()
FROM (
SELECT x = CAST('<t>' +
REPLACE(#word, ' - ', '</t><t>') + '</t>' AS XML)
) a
CROSS APPLY x.nodes('/t') t(c)
)
SELECT txt
FROM CTE
WHERE (cnt+1) / 2 = rn