Splitting value of a varchar column into two columns - sql

Question

If I have a column in which strings vary in length but they ALL have a slash \ within,
how can I SELECT to have one column display everything BEFORE the \ and another column displaying everything AFTER the \?
name column1 column2
DB5697\DEV DB5697 DEV
I have seen CHARINDEX and REVERSE on MSDN but haven't been able to put together a soltuion.
How can I best split a varchar/string column value into 2 columns in a result set in TSQL ?

Answer 1

what about using PARSENAME function in a tricky way?
USE tempdb;
GO
CREATE TABLE #names
(
id int NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED
, name varchar(30) NOT NULL
);
GO
INSERT INTO #names (id, name)
VALUES
(1, 'DB5697\DEV'),
(2, 'DB5800\STG'),
(3, 'DB5900\PRD');
GO
SELECT
name
, PARSENAME(REPLACE(name, '\', '.'), 2) AS [Server]
, PARSENAME(REPLACE(name, '\', '.'), 1) AS [Instance]
FROM
#names;
GO
DROP TABLE #names;
GO
The PARSENAME function accepts 2 parameters and gets the name part of a fully qualified name. The second parameter is the part name enumerator.
Value 2 is for SCHEMA and 1 is for OBJECT.
So, with the REPLACE function the "\" char is replaced by "." in order to have a SCHEMA.OBJECT format of your SERVERNAME\INSTANCE values. Then, PARSENAME behave like having a simple object name in the string.

Answer 2

How about the following (SQL Fiddle):
SELECT m.name,
LEFT(m.name, CHARINDEX('\', m.name) - 1) AS column1,
RIGHT(m.name, LEN(m.name) - CHARINDEX('\', m.name)) AS column2
FROM MyTable m
How to handle strings with no \ in them (SQL Fiddle):
SELECT m.name,
CASE WHEN CHARINDEX('\', m.name) = 0 THEN ''
ELSE LEFT(m.name, CHARINDEX('\', m.name) - 1) END AS column1,
CASE WHEN CHARINDEX('\', m.name) = 0 THEN ''
ELSE RIGHT(m.name, LEN(m.name) - CHARINDEX('\', m.name)) END AS column2
FROM MyTable m;

Answer 3

You can use CHARINDEX to check for the character position of the splitter ('/') and use SUBSTRING to split the string.
However care has to be taken to ensure you handle records without splitters else you would invoke an error.
Also in the case where splitter is unavailable, decision has to be made as to which column the data should be mapped to. Here I am mapping data to FirstName and assigning NULL to LastName
DECLARE #TableBuyer TABLE (ID INT, FullName VARCHAR(100))
INSERT INTO #TableBuyer
SELECT '1','Bryan/Greenberg' UNION ALL
SELECT '2','Channing/Tatum' UNION ALL
SELECT '3','Paul/William' UNION ALL
SELECT '4','EricBana' UNION ALL
SELECT '5','James/Lafferty' UNION ALL
SELECT '6','Wentworth/Miller'
SELECT
CASE
WHEN CHARINDEX('/', FullName) > 0 THEN SUBSTRING(FullName, 1, CHARINDEX('/', FullName) - 1)
ELSE FullName
END AS FirstName
,
CASE
WHEN CHARINDEX('/', FullName) > 0 THEN SUBSTRING(FullName, CHARINDEX('/', FullName) + 1, LEN(FullName))
ELSE NULL
END AS LastName
FROM #TableBuyer;

Answer 4

DECLARE #TableBuyer TABLE (ID INT, FullName VARCHAR(100))
INSERT INTO #TableBuyer
SELECT '1','Bryan/Greenberg' UNION ALL
SELECT '2','Channing/Tatum' UNION ALL
SELECT '3','Paul/William' UNION ALL
SELECT '4','EricBana' UNION ALL
SELECT '5','James/Lafferty' UNION ALL
SELECT '6','Wentworth/Miller'
select left(FullName, len(FullName)-CHARINDEX('/', REVERSE(FullName))) as firstname,
substring(FullName, len(FullName)-CHARINDEX('/', REVERSE(FullName))+ 2, len(FullName)) as lastname
from #TableBuyer
OR
select left(FullName, len(FullName)-CHARINDEX('/', REVERSE(FullName))) as firstname,
RIGHT(FullName, len(FullName)-CHARINDEX('/', FullName)) as lastname
from #TableBuyer

Answer 5

There is no "simple" method. Something like this should work:
select left(col, charindex('\', col) - 1) as column1,
right(col, charindex('\', reverse(col)) - 1) as column2
You might need to double up on the backslash ('\\') to get it to work properly.