How to compare various VARCHAR as numbers in Oracle - sql

I have a table with various number formats like:
2
3.44189
4,1
-0.0022
9.9E+37
1.9E-12
these are measurements in a varchar2 column and to each measurement there is a specification with upper and lower limit value (in same format),
so what i want are measurements in between these borders
SELECT VALUE, LOW, HIGH FROM MEASUREMENTS
WHERE to_number(replace(VALUE,',','.'), '999999999D99999999999999999999999999999999999999','NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS = ''.,''')
> to_number(replace(LOW,',','.'), '999999999D99999999999999999999999999999999999999','NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS = ''.,''')
AND to_number(replace(VALUE,',','.'), '999999999D99999999999999999999999999999999999999','NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS = ''.,''')
<=to_number(replace(HIGH,',','.'), '999999999D99999999999999999999999999999999999999','NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS = ''.,''')
these query works for every number writing above, except exponential numbers like 9.9E+37.
I found a rewriting with TO_CHAR, but it doesnt work with varchar
Have anybody a solution to compare various numbers stored as varchar with each other?
thx

If you know they are all numbers, I would suggest using cast():
select cast(col as float)

Related

Can I combine like and equal to get data?

I have data like this
1234500010
1234500020
1234500021
12345600010
12345600011
123456700010
123456700020
123456710010
The pattern is
1-data(varian 3-7 digit number) + 2-data(any 3 digit number) + 3-data (any 2 digit number)
I want to create SQL to get 1-data only.
For example I want to get data 12345
I want the result only
1234500010
1234500020
1234500021
If I using "like",
select *
FROM data
where ID like '12345%' `
I will get all the data with 12345, 123456 and 1234567
If I using equal, I will only get one specific data.
Can I combine like and equal together to get result like what I want?
select * FROM data where data = '12345 + any 2-data(3 digit) + any 3-data(2 digit)'
Anyone can help?
Addition : Sorry if I didn't mention the data type and make some miss communication. The data type is in char. #Gordon answers and the others not wrong. It works for number and varchar. but not works for char type. Here I post some pic for char data type. Oracle specification for char data type is a fixed lenght. So if I input less than lenght the remain of it will be change into a space.
Thank you very much. Hope someone can help for this
Since your datatype is CHAR, Gordon's answer is not working for you. CHAR adds trailing spaces for the strings less than maximum limit. You could use TRIM to fix this as shown. But, you should preferably store numbers in the NUMBER type and not CHAR or VARCHAR2, which will create other problems sooner or later.
select *
from data
where trim(ID) like '12345_____';
I think you want:
select *
from data
where ID like '12345_____' -- exactly 5 _
Here is a rextester demonstrating the answer.
You really can't combine equality and LIKE. But you can use a regular expression to do this kind of searching, with the REGEXP_LIKE function:
SELECT *
FROM DATA
WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(ID, '^12345[0-9]{3}[0-9]{2}');
But if I understand correctly, for your 1-data you really want a 3 to 7 digit number:
SELECT *
FROM DATA
WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(ID, '^[0-9]{3,7}[0-9]{3}[0-9]{2}');
Oracle regular expression docs here
SQLFiddle here
Best of luck.
I think this gives you the solution you want,
create table data(ID number(15));
insert into data values(1234500010);
insert into data values(1234500020);
insert into data values(1234500021);
insert into data values(12345600010);
insert into data values(12345600011);
insert into data values(123456700010);
insert into data values(123456700020);
insert into data values(123456710010);
select * from data where ID like '12345_____'
// After 5_ underscore are exactly 5 , any 3 digits from 2-data(3 underscores) and 2 digits from 3-data(2 underscores)
You'll be getting(OUTPUT) :
ID
1234500010
1234500020
1234500021
3 rows returned in 0.00 seconds

selecting rows depending on the first digit of an integer in a column

Using SQL in PostgreSQL I need to select all the rows from my table called "crop" when the first digit of the integer numbers in column "field_id" is 7.
select *
from crop
where (left (field_id,1) = 7)
First, you know that the column is a number, so I would be inclined to explicitly convert it, no matter what you do:
where left(crop::text, 1) = '7'
where crop::text like '7%'
The conversion to text is simply to be explicit about what is happening and it makes it easier for Postgres to parse the query.
More importantly, if the value has a fixed number of digits, then I would suggest using a numeric range; something like this:
where crop >= 700000 and crop < 800000
This makes it easier for Postgres to use an index on the column.
Try with cast, like this:
select *
from crop
where cast(substring(cast(field_id as varchar(5)),1,1) as int) = 7
where 5 in varchar(5) you should put number how long is your integer.

Value of real type incorrectly compares

I have field of REAL type in db. I use PostgreSQL. And the query
SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE my_field = 0.15
does not return rows in which the value of my_field is 0.15.
But for instance the query
SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE my_field > 0.15
works properly.
How can I solve this problem and get the rows with my_field = 0.15 ?
To solve your problem use the data type numeric instead, which is not a floating point type, but an arbitrary precision type.
If you enter the numeric literal 0.15 into a numeric (same word, different meaning) column, the exact amount is stored - unlike with a real or float8 column, where the value is coerced to next possible binary approximation. This may or may not be exact, depending on the number and implementation details. The decimal number 0.15 happens to fall between possible binary representations and is stored with a tiny error.
Note that the result of a calculation can be inexact itself, so be still wary of the = operator in such cases.
It also depends how you test. When comparing, Postgres coerces diverging numeric types to a type that can best hold the result.
Consider this demo:
CREATE TABLE t(num_r real, num_n numeric);
INSERT INTO t VALUES (0.15, 0.15);
SELECT num_r, num_n
, num_r = num_n AS test1 --> FALSE
, num_r = num_n::real AS test2 --> TRUE
, num_r - num_n AS result_nonzero --> float8
, num_r - num_n::real AS result_zero --> real
FROM t;
db<>fiddle here
Old sqlfiddle
Therefore, if you have entered 0.15 as numeric literal into your column of data type real, you can find all such rows with:
SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE my_field = real '0.15'
Use numeric columns if you need to store fractional digits exactly.
Your problem originates from IEEE 754.
0.15 is not 0.15, but 0.15000000596046448 (assuming double precision), as it can not be exactly represented as a binary floating point number.
(check this calculator)
Why is this a problem? In this case, most likely because the other side of the comparison uses the exact value 0.15 - through an exact representation, like a numeric type. (Cleared up on suggestion by Eric)
So there are two ways:
use a format that actually stores the numbers in decimal format - as Erwin suggested
(or at least use the same type across the board)
use rounding as Jack suggested - which has to be used carefully (by the way this uses a numeric type too, to exactly represent 0.15...)
Recommended reading:
What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic
(Sorry for the terse answer...)
Well, I can't see your data, but I'm guessing that my_field doesn't exactly equal 0.15. Try:
select * from my_table where round(my_field::numeric,2) = 0.15;
Considering both PPTerka's and Jack's answer.
Approximate numeric data types do not store the exact values specified for many numbers;
Look here for MS' decription of real values.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187912(v=sql.105).aspx

SQL server 'like' against a float field produces inconsistent results

I am using LIKE to return matching numeric results against a float field. It seems that once there are more than 4 digits to the left of the decimal, values that match my search item on the right side of the decimal are not returned. Here's an example illustrating the situation:
CREATE TABLE number_like_test (
num [FLOAT] NULL
)
INSERT INTO number_like_test (num) VALUES (1234.56)
INSERT INTO number_like_test (num) VALUES (3457.68)
INSERT INTO number_like_test (num) VALUES (13457.68)
INSERT INTO number_like_test (num) VALUES (1234.76)
INSERT INTO number_like_test (num) VALUES (23456.78)
SELECT num FROM number_like_test
WHERE num LIKE '%68%'
That query does not return the record with the value of 12357.68, but it does return the record with the value of 3457.68. Also running the query with 78 instead of 68 does not return the 23456.78 record, but using 76 returns the 1234.76 record.
So to get to the question: why having a larger number causes these results to change? How can I change my query to get the expected results?
The like operator requires a string as a left-hand value. According to the documentation, a conversion from float to varchar can use several styles:
Value Output
0 (default) A maximum of 6 digits. Use in scientific notation, when appropriate.
1 Always 8 digits. Always use in scientific notation.
2 Always 16 digits. Always use in scientific notation.
The default style will work fine for the six digits in 3457.68, but not for the seven digits in 13457.68. To use 16 digits instead of 6, you could use convert and specify style 2. Style 2 represents a number like 3.457680000000000e+003. But that wouldn't work for the first two digits, and you get an unexpected +003 exponent for free.
The best approach is probably a conversion from float to decimal. That conversion allows you to specify the scale and precision. Using scale 20 and precision 10, the float is represented as 3457.6800000000:
where convert(decimal(20,10), num) like '%68%'
When you are comparing number with LIKE it is implicitly converted to string and then matched
The problem here is that float number is not precise and when it is converted you can get
13457.679999999999999 instead of 13457.68
So to avid this explicitly format number in appropriate format(not sure how to do this in sql server, but it will be something like)
SELECT num FROM number_like_test
WHERE Format("0.##",num) LIKE '%68%'
The conversion to string is rounding your values. Both CONVERT and CAST have the same behavior.
SELECT cast(num as nvarchar(50)) as s
FROM number_like_test
Or
SELECT convert(nvarchar(50), num) as s
FROM number_like_test
provide the results:
1234.56
3457.68
13457.7
1234.76
23456.8
You'll have to use the STR function and correct format parameters to try to get your results. For example,
SELECT STR(num, 10, 2) as s
FROM number_like_test
gives:
1234.56
3457.68
13457.68
1234.76
23456.78
Pretty well solved already, but you only need to CAST once, not twice like the other answer suggests, LIKE takes care of the string conversion:
SELECT *
FROM number_like_test
WHERE CAST(num AS DECIMAL(12,6)) LIKE '%68%'
And here's a SQL Fiddle showing the rounding behavior: SQL Fiddle
It's probably because a FLOAT data type represents a floating point number which is an approximation of the number and should not be relied on for exact comparisons.
If you need to do a search that includes the float value you would need to either store it in a decimal data type (which will hold the exact number) or convert it to a varchar using something like the STR() function

How do I count decimal places in SQL?

I have a column X which is full of floats with decimals places ranging from 0 (no decimals) to 6 (maximum). I can count on the fact that there are no floats with greater than 6 decimal places. Given that, how do I make a new column such that it tells me how many digits come after the decimal?
I have seen some threads suggesting that I use CAST to convert the float to a string, then parse the string to count the length of the string that comes after the decimal. Is this the best way to go?
You can use something like this:
declare #v sql_variant
set #v=0.1242311
select SQL_VARIANT_PROPERTY(#v, 'Scale') as Scale
This will return 7.
I tried to make the above query work with a float column but couldn't get it working as expected. It only works with a sql_variant column as you can see here: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!6/5c62c/2
So, I proceeded to find another way and building upon this answer, I got this:
SELECT value,
LEN(
CAST(
CAST(
REVERSE(
CONVERT(VARCHAR(50), value, 128)
) AS float
) AS bigint
)
) as Decimals
FROM Numbers
Here's a SQL Fiddle to test this out: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!6/23d4f/29
To account for that little quirk, here's a modified version that will handle the case when the float value has no decimal part:
SELECT value,
Decimals = CASE Charindex('.', value)
WHEN 0 THEN 0
ELSE
Len (
Cast(
Cast(
Reverse(CONVERT(VARCHAR(50), value, 128)) AS FLOAT
) AS BIGINT
)
)
END
FROM numbers
Here's the accompanying SQL Fiddle: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!6/10d54/11
This thread is also using CAST, but I found the answer interesting:
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic314390-8-1.aspx
DECLARE #Places INT
SELECT TOP 1000000 #Places = FLOOR(LOG10(REVERSE(ABS(SomeNumber)+1)))+1
FROM dbo.BigTest
and in ORACLE:
SELECT FLOOR(LOG(10,REVERSE(CAST(ABS(.56544)+1 as varchar(50))))) + 1 from DUAL
A float is just representing a real number. There is no meaning to the number of decimal places of a real number. In particular the real number 3 can have six decimal places, 3.000000, it's just that all the decimal places are zero.
You may have a display conversion which is not showing the right most zero values in the decimal.
Note also that the reason there is a maximum of 6 decimal places is that the seventh is imprecise, so the display conversion will not commit to a seventh decimal place value.
Also note that floats are stored in binary, and they actually have binary places to the right of a binary point. The decimal display is an approximation of the binary rational in the float storage which is in turn an approximation of a real number.
So the point is, there really is no sense of how many decimal places a float value has. If you do the conversion to a string (say using the CAST) you could count the decimal places. That really would be the best approach for what you are trying to do.
I answered this before, but I can tell from the comments that it's a little unclear. Over time I found a better way to express this.
Consider pi as
(a) 3.141592653590
This shows pi as 11 decimal places. However this was rounded to 12 decimal places, as pi, to 14 digits is
(b) 3.1415926535897932
A computer or database stores values in binary. For a single precision float, pi would be stored as
(c) 3.141592739105224609375
This is actually rounded up to the closest value that a single precision can store, just as we rounded in (a). The next lowest number a single precision can store is
(d) 3.141592502593994140625
So, when you are trying to count the number of decimal places, you are trying to find how many decimal places, after which all remaining decimals would be zero. However, since the number may need to be rounded to store it, it does not represent the correct value.
Numbers also introduce rounding error as mathematical operations are done, including converting from decimal to binary when inputting the number, and converting from binary to decimal when displaying the value.
You cannot reliably find the number of decimal places a number in a database has, because it is approximated to round it to store in a limited amount of storage. The difference between the real value, or even the exact binary value in the database will be rounded to represent it in decimal. There could always be more decimal digits which are missing from rounding, so you don't know when the zeros would have no more non-zero digits following it.
Solution for Oracle but you got the idea. trunc() removes decimal part in Oracle.
select *
from your_table
where (your_field*1000000 - trunc(your_field*1000000)) <> 0;
The idea of the query: Will there be any decimals left after you multiply by 1 000 000.
Another way I found is
SELECT 1.110000 , LEN(PARSENAME(Cast(1.110000 as float),1)) AS Count_AFTER_DECIMAL
I've noticed that Kshitij Manvelikar's answer has a bug. If there are no decimal places, instead of returning 0, it returns the total number of characters in the number.
So improving upon it:
Case When (SomeNumber = Cast(SomeNumber As Integer)) Then 0 Else LEN(PARSENAME(Cast(SomeNumber as float),1)) End
Here's another Oracle example. As I always warn non-Oracle users before they start screaming at me and downvoting etc... the SUBSTRING and INSTRING are ANSI SQL standard functions and can be used in any SQL. The Dual table can be replaced with any other table or created. Here's the link to SQL SERVER blog whre i copied dual table code from: http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2010/07/20/sql-server-select-from-dual-dual-equivalent/
CREATE TABLE DUAL
(
DUMMY VARCHAR(1)
)
GO
INSERT INTO DUAL (DUMMY)
VALUES ('X')
GO
The length after dot or decimal place is returned by this query.
The str can be converted to_number(str) if required. You can also get the length of the string before dot-decimal place - change code to LENGTH(SUBSTR(str, 1, dot_pos))-1 and remove +1 in INSTR part:
SELECT str, LENGTH(SUBSTR(str, dot_pos)) str_length_after_dot FROM
(
SELECT '000.000789' as str
, INSTR('000.000789', '.')+1 dot_pos
FROM dual
)
/
SQL>
STR STR_LENGTH_AFTER_DOT
----------------------------------
000.000789 6
You already have answers and examples about casting etc...
This question asks of regular SQL, but I needed a solution for SQLite. SQLite has neither a log10 function, nor a reverse string function builtin, so most of the answers here don't work. My solution is similar to Art's answer, and as a matter of fact, similar to what phan describes in the question body. It works by converting the floating point value (in SQLite, a "REAL" value) to text, and then counting the caracters after a decimal point.
For a column named "Column" from a table named "Table", the following query will produce a the count of each row's decimal places:
select
length(
substr(
cast(Column as text),
instr(cast(Column as text), '.')+1
)
) as "Column-precision" from "Table";
The code will cast the column as text, then get the index of a period (.) in the text, and fetch the substring from that point on to the end of the text. Then, it calculates the length of the result.
Remember to limit 100 if you don't want it to run for the entire table!
It's not a perfect solution; for example, it considers "10.0" as having 1 decimal place, even if it's only a 0. However, this is actually what I needed, so it wasn't a concern to me.
Hopefully this is useful to someone :)
Probably doesn't work well for floats, but I used this approach as a quick and dirty way to find number of significant decimal places in a decimal type in SQL Server. Last parameter of round function if not 0 indicates to truncate rather than round.
CASE
WHEN col = round(col, 1, 1) THEN 1
WHEN col = round(col, 2, 1) THEN 2
WHEN col = round(col, 3, 1) THEN 3
...
ELSE null END