Replace special character apostrophe with normal apostrophe - sql

I have a field which is getting data that contains a special character type of apostrophe outside of the normal oracle ascii range of 0-127. I am trying to do a replace function on this but it keeps being switched to a ? in the DDL. Looking for another way to do the replace
This works in a query but switches when put in the DDL for a view
regexp_replace(field_name,'’',chr(39))
switches to
regexp_replace(field_name,'?',chr(39))
A dump function shows that oracle is storing the apostrophe as three characters of ascii 226,128,153. I tried to write the replace on a concatenation of those but that didn't work either.

First, examine the original data that contains the weird apostrophe. I'm not convinced that it is indeed three characters. Use this:
select value
, substr(value, 5, 1) one_character
, ascii(substr(value, 5, 1)) ascii_value
from table;
This would isolate the 5th character from a column value and its ascii value. Adjust the 5 to the place where the weird apostrophe is located.
When you have the ascii value, use plain replace like this to get rid of it (regexp_replace seems overkill):
replace(value, chr(ascii_value_of_weird_apostrophe), chr(39));

Related

How to store hyphen/dash in Oracle Varchar2

I am trying to store some text with a hyphen aka dash (-) in Oracle 12c Varchar2 field.
But when I go to do a Select on the table value, the hyphen/dash character results in a funny looking symbol. I have tried escaping before using the dash (-) but that still produced the funny looking symbol.
How do i store hypens/dashes properly in Oracle?
Thank you
Putting as answer as for comment it would be too long.
First you have to establish the problem is with inserting dash or while fetching it. To verify, run this on the column
select * from table where column like '%-%';
If you get output, that means it is stored properly. So the problem is with displaying it.
If you don't get ouput, that means you are not inserting it properly. In that case show your insert statement. You just have to treat dash as any other string character.

How to get rid of special character in Netezza columns

I am transferring data from one Netezza database to another using Talend, an ETL tool. When I pull data from a varchar(30) field and try to put it in the new database's varchar(30) field, it gives an error saying it's too long. Logs show the field has whitespace at the end followed by a square, representing some character I can't figure out. I attached a screenshot of the logs below. I have tried writing SQL to pull this field and replace what I thought was a CRLF, but no luck. When I do a select on the field and get the length, it has a few extra characters than what you see, so something is there and I want to get rid of it. Trimming does not do anything.
This SQL does not return a length shorter than simply doing length() on the column itself. Does anyone know what else it could be?
SELECT LENGTH(trim(translate(TRANSLATE(<column>, chr(13), ''), chr(10), ''))) as len_modified
Note that the last column in the logs, where you see a square in brackets, is supposed to show the last character examined.
Save the data to a larger target table size that works. If 30 character data put it in a 500 character table. Get it to work. Then look through character by character on the fields that are the longest to determine what character is being added. Use commands like ascii() to determine the ascii value of the individual characters and the beginning and end. Most likely you are getting some additional character in the beginning or the end. Determine what the extra character data is and then write code to remove it or to never load it so that it fits in the 30 character column. Or just leave your target column with longer and include the additional characters. For example Varchar(30) becomes Varchar(32) (waste the space but don't alter the data as it comes in to you).

Quick way to space fill column 256 chars SQL-Server 2012

So i have a file I'm creating using SQL Server 2012.
Many of the columns are optional or unused, and in place of the characters that would normally be there we are asked to zero-fill numeric columns, and space-fill alphanumeric columns.
Now I have a column called CDD and it's 256 characters long.
Is there a simpler way I can fill this column other than pressing the space bar 256 times in single quotes?
The file is Fixed Width so I have to have 256 spaces in this column for it to import correctly. I was looking at replicate and stuff, but they don't make sense being that the column doesn't have an original string to replace.
Replicate works with zeros but how can I validate it with spaces? The column doesn't expand like it would if there was an actual character in it...Does SQL-Server do any collapsing of white space in this way?
You're going to want to use the replicate function.
SELECT REPLICATE(' ',256)
This function will repeat space (or whatever string you put in the first parameter) 256 (or however many in the second parameter) times.
In addition to REPLICATE you can also use
SELECT SPACE(256);
As far as "the column expanding", the column will not appear expanded in SSMS unless you click on 'Results in Text' (instead of grid). If you use the LEN function it will return 0, but DATALENGTH will return either the actual number of spaces requested for a varchar column, or the defined length of a char column. Either way, if you copy the output into a text editor, you will see that it is indeed a string of empty spaces.

SQL Server regular expression select and update

I have a column that I need to clean the data up on.
First I'd like to do a select to get a record of the bad data then I've like to run a replace on the invalid charters.
I'm looking to select anything that contains non alphanumeric characters but ignores the slash "\" as the second character and also ignores underscores and dashes in the rest of the string. Here's a couple of example of the data I'm expecting to get back from this query.
#\AAA
A\Adam's
A\Amanda.Smith
B\Bear's-ltd
C\Couple & More
After this I'd like to run a replace on any of these invalid characters and replace them with underscores so the result would look like this:
_\AAA
A\Adam_s
A\Amanda_Smith
B\Bear_s-ltd
C\Couple_More
I do not think there is native support for that. You can create a CLR to support regex, ex: https://www.simple-talk.com/sql/t-sql-programming/clr-assembly-regex-functions-for-sql-server-by-example/

How do I escape an enclosure character in a SQL Loader data file?

I have a SQL*Loader control file that has a line something like this:
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '#'
Normally, I'd use a quotation mark, but that seems to destroy emacs's python syntax highlighting if used inside a multi-line string. The problem is that we are loading an ADDRESS_LINE_2 column where only 7,000 out of a million records are loading because they have lines like this:
...(other columns),Apt #2,(other columns)...
Which is of course causing errors. Is there any way to escape the enclosing character so this doesn't happen? Or do I just need to choose a better enclosing character?
I've looked through the documentation, but don't seem to have found an answer to this.
I found it...
If two delimiter characters are encountered next to each other, a single occurrence of the delimiter character is used in the data value. For example, 'DON''T' is stored as DON'T. However, if the field consists of just two delimiter characters, its value is null.
Field List Reference
Unfortunately, SqlLoader computes both occurrences of the delimiter while checking for max length of the field. For instance, DON''T will be rejected in a CHAR(5) field, with ORA-12899: value too large for column blah.blah2 (actual: 6, maximum: 5).
At least in my 11gR2 . Haven't tried in other versions....