I have a nvarchar field in my table, which contains all sorts of strings.
In case there are strings which contain a number following a non-number sign, I want to insert a space before that number.
That is - if a certain entry in that field is abc123, it should be turned into abc 123, or ab12.34 should become ab 12. 34.I want this to be done throughout the entire table.
What's the best way to achieve it?
You can try something like that:
select left(col,PATINDEX('%[0-9]%',col)-1 )+space(1)+
case
when PATINDEX('%[.]%',col)<>0
then substring(col,PATINDEX('%[0-9]%',col),len(col)+1-PATINDEX('%[.]%',col))
+space(1)+
substring(col,PATINDEX('%[.]%',col)+1,len(col)+1-PATINDEX('%[.]%',col))
else substring(col,PATINDEX('%[0-9]%',col),len(col)+1-PATINDEX('%[0-9]%',col))
end
from tab
It's not simply, but I hope it will help you.
SQL Fiddle
I used functions (link to MSDN):
LEFT, PATINDEX, SPACE, SUBSTRING, LEN
and regular expression.
Related
I have a column that I need to select but it has an inconsistent amount of numbers/formatting in the beginning
The column values are ideally supposed to be structured like:
# Question_-_Answer
But here are some examples which make it hard to remove the numbers in the beginning
0 Question1_-_50-60
1.Question_-_apple
12Question_-_40/50
13 Question_-_orange
14.Question_-_apple
15. Question_-_orange2
Is there a way I can query this column so that it ignores everything until the first alphabetical character while also not removing any characters/alphanumerical values in the question and answer portion?
You can use PATINDEX and STUFF to achieve this:
SELECT STUFF(V.YourString,1,PATINDEX('%[A-z]%',V.YourString)-1,'')
FROM (VALUES('0 Question1_-_50-60'),
('1.Question_-_apple'),
('12Question_-_40/50'),
('13 Question_-_orange'),
('14.Question_-_apple'),
('15. Question_-_orange2'))V(YourString);
This removes all characters up to the first alpha character.
I have a table which contains some bad data I am trying to clean up.
An example of the fields is below
36234735HAN876
2342JOE9823
554444PUT003
What I want to do is remove all the numeric characters before the first alphabetical character so it would look like the below:
HAN876
JOE9823
PUT003
What would be the best way to achieve this? I have used the below method but this can only be used to extract ALL numeric from the string, not the ones before the alphabetical characters
How to get the numeric part from a string using T-SQL?
You could achieve this using PATINDEX to locate the first position of an alphabetical character in the string, and then use SUBSTRING to only return the characters after that position:
CREATE TABLE #temp (val VARCHAR(50));
INSERT INTO #temp VALUES ('36234735HAN876'), ('2342JOE9823'), ('554444PUT003'), ('TEST1234');
SELECT val,
SUBSTRING(val, PATINDEX('%[A-Z]%', val), LEN(val)) AS output
FROM #temp;
DROP TABLE #temp;
Outputs:
val output
36234735HAN876 HAN876
2342JOE9823 JOE9823
554444PUT003 PUT003
TEST1234 TEST1234
Note that I have created a temporary table with a column named val. You should change this to work with whatever the actual column is called.
About case sensitivity: If you are using a non-case sensitive collation this will work without issue. If your collation is case sensitive then you may need to alter the pattern being matched to cater for upper- and lower-case letters.
Use PATINDEX to find the first non-numeric character (or first alpha character, depending on the logic) and STUFF to remove them:
SELECT STUFF(V.YourString,1,ISNULL(NULLIF(PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%',V.YourString),0)-1,0),'')
FROM (VALUES('36234735HAN876'),
('2342JOE9823'),
('554444PUT003'),
('ABC123'))V(YourString)
If the logic is the first alpha character, instead of the first non-numeric, then the pattern would be [A-z].
The NULLIF and ISNULL are in there for when/if the string starts with a alpha/non-numeric and thus doesn't cause STUFF to error due to the 3rd parameter being -1. The is demonstrated with the additional example I put into the sample data ('ABC123').
I'm attempting to isolate eight digits from a cell that contains other numbers as well as text and no rhyme or reason to where it is placed. An example return would look something like this:
will deliver 11/07 in USA at 12:30 with conf# 12345678
I need the conf# only, but it could be at the end, beginning, middle of the string and I don't know how to isolate it. I'm working in DB2 so I can't use functions such as PATINDEX or CHARINDEX, so what are my other option for pulling out only "12345678" regardless of where it is located?
While DB2 doesn't have PATINDEX or CHARINDEX, it does have LOCATE.
If your DB2 version supportx pureXML, you can use the regular expression support in XQuery, something like:
select xmlcast(
xmlquery(
' if (fn:matches( $YOURCOLUMN, "(^|.*[^\d])(\d{8})([^\d].*$|$)")) then fn:replace( $YOURCOLUMN,"(^|.*[^\d])(\d{8})([^\d].*$|$)","$2") else "" '
)
as varchar(20)
)
from YOURTABLE
This assumes that 8-digit sequence appears only once in the column. You may need to tweak the regex to support some border cases.
I am working with an Oracle database and would like to write a REGEXP_LIKE expression that finds any number where all digits are the same, such as '999999999' or '777777777' without specifying the length of the field. Also, I would like it to be able to identify characters as well, such as 'aaaaa'.
I was able to get it working when specifying the field length, by using this:
select * from table1
where regexp_like (field1, '^([0-9a-z])\1\1\1\1\1\1\1\1');
But I would like it to be able to do this for any field length.
If a field contains '7777771', for example, I would not want to see it in the results.
Try this:
^([0-9a-z])\1+$
Live demo
You're almost there. You just need to anchor the end of the regex.
^([0-9a-z])\1+$
I have a table with a field that denotes whether the data in that row is valid or not. This field contains a string of undetermined length. I need a query that will only pull out rows where all the characters in this field are N. Some possible examples of this field.
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNEEEENNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNOOOOOEEEENNNNNNNNNNNN
Any suggestions on a postcard please.
Many thanks
This should do the trick:
SELECT Field
FROM YourTable
WHERE Field NOT LIKE '%[^N]%' AND Field <> ''
What it's doing is a wildcard search, broken down:
The LIKE will find records where the field contains characters other than N in the field. So, we apply a NOT to that as we're only interested in records that do not contain characters other than N. Plus a condition to filter out blank values.
SELECT *
FROM mytable
WHERE field NOT LIKE '%[^N]%'
I don't know which SQL dialect you are using. For example Oracle has several functions you may use. With oracle you could use condition like :
WHERE LTRIM(field, 'N') = ''
The idea is to trim out all N's and see if the result is empty string. If you don't have LTRIM, check if you have some kind of TRANSLATE or REPLACE function to do the same thing.
Another way to do it could be to pick length of your field and then construct comparator value by padding empty string with N. Perhaps something like:
WHERE field = RPAD('', field, 'N)
Oracle pads that empty string with N's and picks number of pad characters from length of the second argument. Perhaps this works too:
WHERE field = RPAD('', LENGTH(field), 'N)
I haven't tested those, but hopefully that give you some ideas how to solve your problem. I guess that many of these solutions have bad performance if you have lot of rows and you don't have other WHERE conditions to select proper index.