Please help me because I have been unable to get this right.
What is the access SQL to select this column(columnA) so that it returns a resultset with distinct values sorted first according to numbers and then to letters.
Here is the columns values: {10A,9C,12D,11G,9B,10C,9R,8T}
I have tried 'Select distinct ColumnA from tblClass order by 1'
but it returns {10A,10C,11G,12D,8T,9B,9C,9R} which is not what I want.
Thank you in advance.
You can use the Val() function for this. From the help topic: "The Val function stops reading the string at the first character it can't recognize as part of a number"
Val(10A) will give you 10, Val(9C) will give you 9, and so on. So in your query, order by Val(ColumnA) first, then ColumnA.
SELECT DISTINCT Val([ColumnA]) AS number_part, ColumnA
FROM tblClass
ORDER BY Val([ColumnA]), ColumnA;
SELECT DISTINCT ColumnA
FROM tblClass
ORDER BY CInt(LEFT(ColumnA,len(ColumnA)-1)), RIGHT(ColumnA,1);
If there last character is a letter and the others are a number.
Your data type is a string so it's sorting correctly, to get the result you want you're going to have to split your values into numeric and alphabetic parts and then sort first on the numeric then the alphabetic. Not being an Access programmer I can't help you with exactly how you're going to do that.
order by 1?
Don't you mean order by ColumnA?
SELECT DISTINCT ColumnA
FROM tblClass
ORDER BY ColumnA
I had a similar problem and used a dummie workaround:
changing a list of {10A,10C,11G,12D,8T,9B,9C,9R}
into {10A,10C,11G,12D,08T,09B,09C,09R} by adding the 0 before each <10 number.
now all items are the same length and access will sort correctly into {08T, 09B, 09C, 09R, 10A, 10C, 11G, 12D}
.
To achieve this, I copied this column into excel column A and used IF(LEN(A2)<3, concatenate("0", A2))
Related
I have some records in a column that contain IDs and some of these records contain multiple IDs separated by commas. Additionally there are some records where I have ",3" and ",2" when they should simply be "3" and "2". I do not have write privileges in this DB so updating those records is not an option.
I am trying to write a query that returns records that have a comma where the value to the left of any comma in the record is greater than 0 e.g. "2,3", "2,3,12" etc but NOT ",3" or ",2".
What would this expression look like in MS Access?
Thanks in advance.
If you want to remove the starting comma from the records when you return them, you can do so using a simple query:
SELECT IIF(MyField LIKE ",*", Right(MyField, Len(MyField)-1), MyField)
FROM MyTable
To answer your original question, you could simply use Val:
SELECT * FROM YourTable WHERE Val([YourField]) > 0
I would simply use:
select t.*
from t
where val not like ",*";
This doesn't handle the 0 part, but you don't give any examples in your answer. Perhaps this answers that part:
select t.*
from t
where val not like ",*" and val not like "*0,*";
I have been working on this on for months. I just cannot get the natural (True alpha-numeric) results. I am shocked that I cannot get them as I have been able to in RPG since 1992 with EBCDIC.
I am looking for any solution in SQL, VBS or simple excel or access. Here is the data I have:
299-8,
3410L-87,
3410L-88,
420-A20,
420-A21,
420A-40,
4357-3,
AN3H10A,
K117GM-8,
K129-1,
K129-15,
K271B-200L,
K271B-38L,
K271D-200EL,
KD1051,
KD1062,
KD1092,
KD1108,
KD1108,
M8000-3,
MS24665-1,
SK271B-200L,
SAYA4008
The order I am looking for is the true alpha-numeric order as below:
AN3H10A,
KD1051,
KD1062,
KD1092,
KD1108,
KD1108,
K117GM-8,
K129-1,
K129-15,
MS24665-1,
M8000-3,
SAYA4008,
SK271B-200L
The inventory is 7800 records so I have had some problems with processing power as well.
Any help would be appreciated.
Jeff
In native Excel, you can add multiple sorting columns to return the ASCII code for each character, but if the character is a number, then add a large number to the code (e.g 1000).
Then sort on each of the helper columns, including the first column in the table, but not in the sort.
The formula:
=IFERROR(CODE(MID($A1,COLUMNS($A:A),1))+AND(CODE(MID($A1,COLUMNS($A:A),1))>=48,CODE(MID($A1,COLUMNS($A:A),1))<=57)*1000,"")
The Sort dialog:
The results:
You can implement a similar algorithm using VBA, and probably SQL also. I dunno about VBS or Access.
You could try using format for left padding the string in order by
select column
from my_table
order by Format(column, "0000000000")
Add a sorting column:
, iif (left(fieldname, 1) between '0' and '9', 1, 0) sortField
etc
order by sortField, FieldName
Lets say you have your data in column "A". If you put this formula in column "B" =IFERROR(IF(LEFT(A1,1)+1>0,"ZZZZZZZ "&A1,A1),A1), it will automatically add Z in front of all numerical values, so that they will naturally appear after all alphabetical values when you sort A-Z. later you can find&replace that funny ZZZZZZ string...
There a number of approaches, but likely the least amount of work is to build two columns that split out the delimiter (-) in this case.
You then “pad” the results (spaces, or 0) right justified, and then sort on the two columns.
So in the query builder we have this:
SELECT Field1,
Format(
Mid(field1,1,IIf(InStr(field1,"-")=0,50,InStr(field1,"-")-1)),
">##########") AS Expr1,
Format(
Mid(field1,IIf(InStr(field1,"-")=0,99,InStr(field1,"-")+1)),
">##########") AS Expr2
FROM Data
When we run the above raw query we get this:
So now in the query builder, simply sort on the first derived column, and then sort on the 2nd derived column.
Eg this:
Run the query, and we get this result:
Edit:
Looking at you desired results, it looks like above sort is wrong. We have to RIGHT just and pad with 0’s.
So this 2nd try:
SELECT Field1,
Left(Mid(field1,1,IIf(InStr(field1,"-")=0,30,InStr(field1,"-")-1))
& String(30,"0"),30) AS Expr1,
Left(Mid(field1,IIf(InStr(field1,"-")=0,99,InStr(field1,"-")+1))
& String(30,"0"),30) AS Expr2
FROM Data
The results are thus this:
Given your small table size, then the above query should perform quite well.
I'm trying to retrieve all columns that start with any non alpha characters in SQlite but can't seem to get it working. I've currently got this code, but it returns every row:
SELECT * FROM TestTable WHERE TestNames NOT LIKE '[A-z]%'
Is there a way to retrieve all rows where the first character of TestNames are not part of the alphabet?
Are you going first character only?
select * from TestTable WHERE substr(TestNames,1) NOT LIKE '%[^a-zA-Z]%'
The substr function (can also be called as left() in some SQL languages) will help isolate the first char in the string for you.
edit:
Maybe substr(TestNames,1,1) in sqllite, I don't have a ready instance to test the syntax there on.
Added:
select * from TestTable WHERE Upper(substr(TestNames,1,1)) NOT in ('A','B','C','D','E',....)
Doesn't seem optimal, but functionally will work. Unsure what char commands there are to do a range of letters in SQLlite.
I used 'upper' to make it so you don't need to do lower case letters in the not in statement...kinda hope SQLlite knows what that is.
try
SELECT * FROM TestTable WHERE TestNames NOT LIKE '[^a-zA-Z]%'
SELECT * FROM NC_CRIT_ATTACH WHERE substring(FILENAME,1,1) NOT LIKE '[A-z]%';
SHOULD be a little faster as it is
A) First getting all of the data from the first column only, then scanning it.
B) Still a full-table scan unless you index this column.
I found a weird problem with MySQL select statement having "IN" in where clause:
I am trying this query:
SELECT ads.*
FROM advertisement_urls ads
WHERE ad_pool_id = 5
AND status = 1
AND ads.id = 23
AND 3 NOT IN (hide_from_publishers)
ORDER BY rank desc
In above SQL hide_from_publishers is a column of advertisement_urls table, with values as comma separated integers, e.g. 4,2 or 2,7,3 etc.
As a result, if hide_from_publishers contains same above two values, it should return only record for "4,2" but it returns both records
Now, if I change the value of hide_for_columns for second set to 3,2,7 and run the query again, it will return single record which is correct output.
Instead of hide_from_publishers if I use direct values there, i.e. (2,7,3) it does recognize and returns single record.
Any thoughts about this strange problem or am I doing something wrong?
There is a difference between the tuple (1, 2, 3) and the string "1, 2, 3". The former is three values, the latter is a single string value that just happens to look like three values to human eyes. As far as the DBMS is concerned, it's still a single value.
If you want more than one value associated with a record, you shouldn't be storing it as a comma-separated value within a single field, you should store it in another table and join it. That way the data remains structured and you can use it as part of a query.
You need to treat the comma-delimited hide_from_publishers column as a string. You can use the LOCATE function to determine if your value exists in the string.
Note that I've added leading and trailing commas to both strings so that a search for "3" doesn't accidentally match "13".
select ads.*
from advertisement_urls ads
where ad_pool_id = 5
and status = 1
and ads.id = 23
and locate(',3,', ','+hide_from_publishers+',') = 0
order by rank desc
You need to split the string of values into separate values. See this SO question...
Can Mysql Split a column?
As well as the supplied example...
http://blog.fedecarg.com/2009/02/22/mysql-split-string-function/
Here is another SO question:
MySQL query finding values in a comma separated string
And the suggested solution:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/string-functions.html#function_find-in-set
I need to order a select query using a varchar column, using numerical and text order. The query will be done in a java program, using jdbc over postgresql.
If I use ORDER BY in the select clause I obtain:
1
11
2
abc
However, I need to obtain:
1
2
11
abc
The problem is that the column can also contain text.
This question is similar (but targeted for SQL Server):
How do I sort a VARCHAR column in SQL server that contains words and numbers?
However, the solution proposed did not work with PostgreSQL.
Thanks in advance, regards,
I had the same problem and the following code solves it:
SELECT ...
FROM table
order by
CASE WHEN column < 'A'
THEN lpad(column, size, '0')
ELSE column
END;
The size var is the length of the varchar column, e.g 255 for varying(255).
You can use regular expression to do this kind of thing:
select THECOL from ...
order by
case
when substring(THECOL from '^\d+$') is null then 9999
else cast(THECOL as integer)
end,
THECOL
First you use regular expression to detect whether the content of the column is a number or not. In this case I use '^\d+$' but you can modify it to suit the situation.
If the regexp doesn't match, return a big number so this row will fall to the bottom of the order.
If the regexp matches, convert the string to number and then sort on that.
After this, sort regularly with the column.
I'm not aware of any database having a "natural sort", like some know to exist in PHP. All I've found is various functions:
Natural order sort in Postgres
Comment in the PostgreSQL ORDER BY documentation