parsing an integer field in sql - sql

Question

I want to split every digit in an integer field in an sql table . example of that would be:
financialNb = 7869
i need the 7 as first digit, 8 as second, 6 as third and 9 as fourth. this is needed because I want every digit to be used as 1 data field in a crystal report?

Answer 1

First you have to convert or cast numbers into text before you can manipulate them in this way. The functions you are looking for are CAST() and SUBSTRING(). To get the numbers to start from the right, you can use REVERSE().
Try this example:
SELECT 7869 AS field1
INTO #tmp
SELECT SUBSTRING(REVERSE(CAST(field1 AS VARCHAR(255))),8,1) AS [Column8]
,SUBSTRING(REVERSE(CAST(field1 AS VARCHAR(255))),7,1) AS [Column7]
,SUBSTRING(REVERSE(CAST(field1 AS VARCHAR(255))),6,1) AS [Column6]
,SUBSTRING(REVERSE(CAST(field1 AS VARCHAR(255))),5,1) AS [Column5]
,SUBSTRING(REVERSE(CAST(field1 AS VARCHAR(255))),4,1) AS [Column4]
,SUBSTRING(REVERSE(CAST(field1 AS VARCHAR(255))),3,1) AS [Column3]
,SUBSTRING(REVERSE(CAST(field1 AS VARCHAR(255))),2,1) AS [Column2]
,SUBSTRING(REVERSE(CAST(field1 AS VARCHAR(255))),1,1) AS [Column1]
FROM #tmp
DROP TABLE #tmp

Answer 2

Presumably your question is about parsing 7869. Using the substring function for this:
select substring(cast(<col> as char(4)), 1, 1) as FirstChar,
substring(cast(<col> as char(4)), 2, 1) as SecondChar,
substring(cast(<col> as char(4)), 3, 1) as ThirdChar,
substring(cast(<col> as char(4)), 4, 1) as FourthChar
from YourTable
I might be interpreting the ordering of the digits incorrectly, and this assumes the strings are always 4 digits and that you want characters. An alternative way is just to look at this as numbers:
select <col%10 as FirstNum,
(col/10) %10 as SecondNum,
(col/100)%10 as ThirdNum,
(col/1000)%10 as FourthNum

Answer 3

You can use the modulo operator (%) to get the digits of an integer, without using the slower string manipulation functions, like this
select
value % 100000000 / 10000000,
value % 10000000 / 1000000,
value % 1000000 / 100000,
value % 100000 / 10000,
value % 10000 / 1000,
value % 1000 / 100,
value % 100 / 10,
value % 10
from testData
Here is a SQL Fiddle to play with.
If the field is always 4 numbers long, you can get away with:
select
value / 1000 as Thousands,
value % 1000 / 100 as Hundreds,
value % 100 / 10 as Tens,
value % 10 as Units
from testData
If, however, you need to use it on arbitrary numbers, you could create a user-defined table valued function, that will return the digits in a table, like this:
create function dbo.getDigits(#Input int)
returns #Digits table
(
Digit int,
Position int
)
as begin
declare #pos int
declare #digit int
set #pos = 0
if #input = 0
begin
-- zero is just a single zero digit at position 1
insert into #digits values (0,1)
return
end
while #input<>0 begin
set #pos=#pos+1
set #digit = #input % 10
set #input = #input / 10
insert into #digits values (#digit, #pos)
end
return
end
and use it like this:
SELECT td.ID, td.Value, d.Digit, d.Position
FROM testData td
CROSS APPLY dbo.getDigits(td.Value) AS d
order by td.ID, d.Position Desc
(Here's another SQL Fiddle, based on the previous one)