I have found many answers that have pointed me on the right track for what I want, like this.
However, if I had a string like "this attachment will be 22 in. x 15 in. long" I would want to grab "22" (the first int value in the string). Also, I won't know how large (# of characters) the int value will be so I'll need to find the WHOLE first int value until the next special character/space in the string.
Any idea how I can go about doing this?
Assuming there really is a number in the string, you can use patindex():
select left(s, patindex('%[^0-9]%', s) - 1)
from (select substring(col, patindex('%[0-9]%', col), len(col)) as s
from t
) t;
Related
I have a long numbered list imported into a table, the strings are in the following format:
1. fdhsglahs sdhkgs
2. urgbvdgh ndovh
3. 8yhbnxjghr nvdfo dfhioj
...
9999. vnur neeu nu
I want to remove the numbers in the beginning of the string, the "." adjacent to the number, and any number of spaces that come immediately after the "." and before the next character (that is, before the beginning of the string itself).
Can't find a method to do that in SQLite.
Please notice, some of the strings contain numbers as part of the string, which are not to be removed.
For this requirement you can use string functions like substr(), instr() and ltrim():
select ltrim(substr(col, instr(col, '.') + 1))
from tablename
Replace col with the column's name.
this code returns the part of the string after the . left trimmed of spaces.
See the demo.
If you want to update the table:
update tablename
set col = ltrim(substr(col, instr(col, '.') + 1));
See the demo.
It seems that a regular expression would be ideal, yet some team members are not fond of regex...
Problem: Data in a column (from a mainframe flat file import) looks like 2 different ways
BreakID = 83823737237
OR
MFR BreakID=482883
Thus, the differences are a space before numerics, length of both the alphacharacter before the equals varies and finally the length of the numbers will vary.
Seems I have a few approaches,
1. Everything after the = sign , and trim ?
2. regex , get only the numerics?
So I found this code, in which I assume PATINDEX is standard way of doing regex in -tsql ? what is "string" in this?
SELECT SUBSTRING(string, PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', string), PATINDEX('%[0-9][^0-9]%', string + 't') - PATINDEX('%[0-9]%',
string) + 1) AS Number
How would this be solved with best practices?
Slightly different answer than scsimon. I usually go this route when I have to grab the vals at the end of a string. You reverse the string and grab position of the first instance of your key value ('=' in this case). Get that position with charindex, and then grab the RIGHT() chars using that charindex value.
DECLARE #val1 VARCHAR(100) = 'BreakID = 83823737237'
DECLARE #val2 VARCHAR(100) = 'MFR BreakID=482883'
SELECT
LTRIM(RTRIM(RIGHT(#val1, CHARINDEX('=', REVERSE(#val1), 0)-1)))
,LTRIM(RTRIM(RIGHT(#val2, CHARINDEX('=', REVERSE(#val2), 0)-1)))
This solution will play nice if you have weird cases, like if you have a company called SQL=Cool in your data and it needs an ID:
'SQL=CoolID = 12345'
and you wanted to still get 12345.
Seems like a good use case for substring and replace with charindex
We take the substring from everything starting with the first value after the = up to 99 digits (or how ever many you want to enter). We use replace to get rid of the leading space, if there is one.
select replace(substring(stringColumn,charindex('=',stringColumn) + 1,99),' ','')
That solution is good and versatile, although it sounds like your string will always have an = so you could write something more specific around that if you want to.
That solution finds the start location of the first number string:
PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', string)
And finds the location of the first non-numeric character after that number string (adding a 't' to the end of the string, in case it ends in a number which would otherwise throw an error):
PATINDEX('%[0-9][^0-9]%', string + 't')
And finally it subtracts the start position of the number from the end position to find the length of the number string, and pulls that length out with substring:
SELECT SUBSTRING(string, PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', string), PATINDEX('%[0-9][^0-9]%', string + 't') - PATINDEX('%[0-9]%',
string) + 1) AS Number
Here "string" is a placeholder that should be replaced with your column name. Also, the easiest way to test stuff like this in tsql is to use a variable:
DECLARE #string varchar(100) = 'foo bar la la la 83823737237'
SELECT SUBSTRING(#string, PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', #string), PATINDEX('%[0-9][^0-9]%', #string + 't') - PATINDEX('%[0-9]%',
#string) + 1) AS Number
Output:
83823737237
Kaizen: go for the simple solution, not the perfect one
SELECT substring(c, charindex('=', c), 999)
I'm assuming the column you're putting this in is some kind of number. Sqlserver doesn't care about leading spaces when casting to a number
If it's going in a string column then wrap it in a ltrim()
Now to your questions
1 .. trim
Sure, as above
2 regex...
Not implemented in sqlserver unless you use CLR
PATINDEX ...
It's like regex but it's a very limited subset that only does searching, only returns one string index, doesn't capture, has limited/no character classes. It's more like dos/vb6 wildcards/like than regex
...best practice?
Look at it simply; you're getting the part of a string after an =, not landing on the moon. the best solution to minor optimisations like these is the one that requires the least amount of mental effort from the next human who takes over your job, to get up to speed with this (it'll still be being used in 20 years) :)
In my table for the rows containing values like
sample>test Y10,
Sample> y21
I want to get a substring like y10,y21 from all rows. May I pls know how to get it. I tried with regexp_substr,Instr but not able to find the solution.
I am supposing that your string from column is devided by a single space .
It will give you last occurances which will be splited by ' ' a space
substr(your_string, 1, instr(yourString,' ') - 1)
OR you can achive this using regexp_substr
regexp_substr(your_String, '[^[:space:]]+', 1, -1 )
Assuming that yxx is always preceded by a space, it should be as easy as doing this:
TRIM(REGEXP_SUBSTR(mycolumn, ' y\d+', 1, 1, 'i'))
The above regular expression will grab y (note that it is case-insensitive, so it will grab Y as well) followed by an indefinite number (one or more) of digits. If you want to grab just two digits, replace \d+ with \d{2}.
Also, please note that it will get the first occurrence only. Getting multiple occurrences is a bit more complicated, but it can still be done.
I am trying to only return the second to last character from a string using MS SQL.
I've tried using MID and Substring but the length of the string isn't always the same for the column I am trying to return, So I can't do it that way.
So say I am returning the codes of something:
Code
'1234'
I want to just return '3' from that code.
How can I do this?
Cheers in advance :)
Use SUBSTRING and LEN. LEN gives you the length of the string, then subtract 1 to get the previous char:
SELECT SUBSTRING(Code, LEN(Code)-1,1)
How about
select left(right(code, 2), 1) from MyTable;
You might need to validate that the string actually has at least 2 chars, however.
SqlFiddle here
I have a varchar column with Url's with data that looks like this:
http://google.mews.......http://www.somesite.com
I want to get rid of the first http and keep the second one so the row above would result in:
http://www.somesite.com
I've tried using split() but can't get it to work
Thanks
If you are trying to do this using T-SQL, you can try something in the lines of:
-- assume #v is the variable holding the URL
SELECT SUBSTRING(#v, PATINDEX('%_http://%', #v) + 1, LEN(#v))
This will return the start position of the first http:// that has before it at least one character (hence the '%_' before it and the + 1 offset).
If the first URL always starts right from the beginning of the string, you can use SUBSTRING() & CHARINDEX():
SELECT SUBSTRING(column, CHARINDEX('http://', column, 2), LEN(column))
FROM table
CHARINDEX simply searches a string for a substring and returns the substring's starting position within the string. Its third argument is optional and, if set, specifies the search starting position, in this case it's 2 so it didn't hit the first http://.