Selecting between quotes (") in SQL Server 2012 - sql

Question

I have a table holding IDs in one column and a string in the second column like below.
COLUMN01 COLUMN02
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 abc"11444,12,13"efg"14,15"hij"16,17,18,19"opqr
2 ahsdhg"21,22,23"ghshds"24,25"fgh"26,27,28,28"shgshsg
3 xvd"3142,32,33"hty"34,35"okli"36,37,38,39"adfd
Now I want to have the following result
COLUMN01 COLUMN02
-----------------------------------------------------------
1 11444,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19
2 21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,28
3 3142,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39
How can I do that?
Thanks so much

Answer 1

Here is one way (maybe not the best, but it seems to work). I am NOT a SQL guru...
First, create this SQL Function. It came from: Extract numbers from a text in SQL Server
create function [dbo].[GetNumbersFromText](#String varchar(2000))
returns table as return
(
with C as
(
select cast(substring(S.Value, S1.Pos, S2.L) as int) as Number,
stuff(s.Value, 1, S1.Pos + S2.L, '') as Value
from (select #String+' ') as S(Value)
cross apply (select patindex('%[0-9]%', S.Value)) as S1(Pos)
cross apply (select patindex('%[^0-9]%', stuff(S.Value, 1, S1.Pos, ''))) as S2(L)
union all
select cast(substring(S.Value, S1.Pos, S2.L) as int),
stuff(S.Value, 1, S1.Pos + S2.L, '')
from C as S
cross apply (select patindex('%[0-9]%', S.Value)) as S1(Pos)
cross apply (select patindex('%[^0-9]%', stuff(S.Value, 1, S1.Pos, ''))) as S2(L)
where patindex('%[0-9]%', S.Value) > 0
)
select Number
from C
)
Then, you can do something like this to get the results you were asking for. Note that I broke the query up into 3 parts for clarity. And, obviously, you don't need to declare the table variable and insert data into it.
DECLARE #tbl
TABLE (
COLUMN01 int,
COLUMN02 varchar(max)
)
INSERT INTO #tbl VALUES (1, 'abc"11444,12,13"efg"14,15"hij"16,17,18,19"opqr')
INSERT INTO #tbl VALUES (2, 'ahsdhg"21,22,23"ghshds"24,25"fgh"26,27,28,28"shgshsg')
INSERT INTO #tbl VALUES (3, 'xvd"3142,32,33"hty"34,35"okli"36,37,38,39"adfd')
SELECT COLUMN01, SUBSTRING(COLUMN02, 2, LEN(COLUMN02) - 1) as COLUMN02 FROM
(
SELECT COLUMN01, REPLACE(COLUMN02, ' ', '') as COLUMN02 FROM
(
SELECT COLUMN01, (select ',' + number as 'data()' from dbo.GetNumbersFromText(Column02) for xml path('')) as COLUMN02 FROM #tbl
) t
) tt
GO
output:
COLUMN01 COLUMN02
1 11444,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19
2 21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,28
3 3142,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39

Answer 2

I know you want to do it using SQL. But ones I had nearly the same problem and getting this data to a string using a php or another language, than parsing is a way to do it. For example, you can use this kind of code after receiving the data into a string.
function clean($string) {
$string = str_replace(' ', '-', $string); // Replaces all spaces with hyphens.
$string = preg_replace('/[^A-Za-z0-9\-]/', '', $string); // Removes special chars.
return preg_replace('/-+/', '-', $string); // Replaces multiple hyphens with single one.
}
For more information you might want to look at this post that I retrieved the function: Remove all special characters from a string
As I said this is an easy way to do it, I hope this could help.