I have a column named Name in a table called test which has Full name and I am trying to extract First name and Last Name. So I wrote query something like this:
SELECT
[Name],
LEFT([Name],CHARINDEX(' ',[Name])-1) AS FIRST_NAME,
SUBSTRING([Name],CHARINDEX(' ',[Name])+1,LEN([Name])) AS LAST_NAME
FROM Test
But It is giving me error saying:
Msg 537, Level 16, State 2, Line 1
Invalid length parameter passed to the LEFT or SUBSTRING function.
Thta's because I have some values in the name like:
Name:
Hopkins
How do I handle these?
Declare #t table ( [Name] varchar(100) )
insert into #t ( Name )
VALUES ( 'dennis hopper' ), ('keanu reaves'), ('thatgirl')
SELECT
[Name],
CHARINDEX(' ', [Name]),
CASE WHEN CHARINDEX(' ', [Name]) > 0 THEN
LEFT([Name],CHARINDEX(' ',[Name])-1)
ELSE
[Name]
END as FIRST_NAME,
CASE WHEN CHARINDEX(' ', [Name]) > 0 THEN
SUBSTRING([Name],CHARINDEX(' ',[Name])+1, ( LEN([Name]) - CHARINDEX(' ',[Name])+1) )
ELSE
NULL
END as LAST_NAME
FROM #t
The problem with your original code is here:
CHARINDEX(' ',[Name])-1
If [Name] does not contain a space, CharIndex returns 0. You subtract 1 and feed this in to the Left function. When the 2nd parameter to the left function is -1, you will get this error. In my opinion, the easiest way to "fix" this problem is to give the CharIndex function something to find, like this:
CHARINDEX(' ',[Name] + ' ')-1
Now... this code cannot fail.
You only NEED to do this one place in your original code, but you should add it to the LAST_NAME part also. If you don't, you will get incorrect results (eventhough you will not get an error).
SELECT [Name],
LEFT([Name],CHARINDEX(' ',[Name] + ' ')-1) AS FIRST_NAME,
SUBSTRING([Name],CHARINDEX(' ',[Name] + ' ')+1,LEN([Name])) AS LAST_NAME
FROM Test
This query will return the same results as the query suggested by #Sage, but (in my opinion) it is easier to read, and easier to understand.
we may also use locate function
SELECT
Name,
LEFT(Name,locate(' ',Name)-1) AS FIRST_NAME,
SUBSTRING(Name,locate(' ',Name)+1,LENgth(Name)) AS LAST_NAME
FROM test
Related
I want to return name of customers and order them, but their titles must be excluded in ordering.
SELECT name
FROM customers
WHERE name LIKE ...
ORDER BY name
I mean by 'their titles' is such as Dr., Sn., Lady, Sir, Mr., and Mrs.
Possible solution to your problem.
In Oracle:
regexp_replace(user_name, '^(MISS|MS\.|MS|MRS\.|MRS|MR\.|MR)\s*', '') as user_name
Also you can use REPLACE () function like:
REPLACE (user_name, 'MISS', '') as user_name
If you have a column structure like (mr | mrs | other) / space / username you can try this:
with users(user_name) as
(select 'mr user name1' from dual union all
select 'miss username2 ' from dual union all
select 'other username 3' from dual )
select substr(user_name,instr(user_name,' ')+1) real_username from users
Output:
REAL_USERNAME
----------------
username 1
username 2
username 3
In MSSQL:
DECLARE #str VARCHAR(500)='Mr Sam'
SELECT Title,
first_name,
Substring(NAME, CASE
WHEN Charindex(' ', NAME) = 0 THEN 1
ELSE Charindex(' ', NAME)
END, Len(NAME)) last_name
FROM (SELECT CASE
WHEN LEFT(#str, Charindex(' ', #str)) IN( 'Mr', 'Mrs', 'Miss' ) THEN LEFT(#str, Charindex(' ', #str))
ELSE ''
END AS Title,
CASE
WHEN LEFT(#str, Charindex(' ', #str)) IN ( 'Mr', 'Mrs', 'Miss' ) THEN LEFT(Stuff(#str, 1, Charindex(' ', #str), ''), Charindex(' ', Stuff(#str, 1, Charindex(' ', #str), '')))
ELSE LEFT(#str, Charindex(' ', #str))
END AS first_name,
CASE
WHEN LEFT(#str, Charindex(' ', #str)) IN ( 'Mr', 'Mrs', 'Miss' ) THEN Stuff(#str, 1, Charindex(' ', #str), '')
ELSE #str
END NAME) a
Technically using a % before their name will allow any prefix, which would get you the desired result (ex. WHERE name LIKE ('%' + #name). However, this is not the recommended approach on larger data sets as you will see significant performance issues with this approach.
You need to be more specific. First of all: Which SQL "flavor" are you using? Postgres? Oracle? MySql? This is very important because each engine has different functions. Every time you ask an SQL question in SO, be sure to include at the very least a tag mentioning which DBMS you're using.
Now, what do you mean by "I shouldn't return them". Do you mean you should not return records which have a prefix, or do you mean you need to return the records but without the prefix? (So if you have Dr. Henry Gutierrez, do you exclude him from the result? Or have it output as Henry Gutierrez?)
This is also a good place for another tip: Always write an expected output in your questions. "If X is Y then I expect the output to be this:"
If you need to exclude them entirely, you can use a REGEXP match (Once again, I cannot list a specific function because I have no idea which type of SQL you're using) Something like WHERE REGEXP(UPPER(COL)) NOT ('^(MS|MR)\s+.*$')
If it's the 2nd case, that's going to be much harder because you'd need to get a substring which excludes the prefix, but the prefixes all have different sizes so you can't just write a "one size fits all"
In general, it's a bad normalization practice to have prefixes in your SQL database. You should have a column called PREFIX and another column for the name itself.
EDIT: Based on your answer. This is the closest you can get to achieving what you want.
SELECT NAME
FROM (SELECT NAME,
CASE WHEN NAME LIKE 'MR %' THEN SUBSTRING(NAME, 4)
WHEN NAME LIKE 'MRS %' THEN SUBSTRING(NAME, 5)
ELSE NAME AS NAME2
FROM YOUR_TABLE ORDER BY NAME2) AS SUBQ
I am 99% sure this will not return the results ordered though, because the select order might be ignored outside of the subquery, so you can also just try whats in the subquery in a main query instead, but this will output 2 columns.
***My reply is in pseudocode. It is not exactly MySql syntax, you will need to check MySql documentation for the actual substring function implementation it has and for the CASE syntax.
I'm having a table Employee, in that some values are started with ", ". So, I need to remove the comma and white-space at the beginning of the name at the time of SELECT query using LTRIM() - SQL-Server.
My Table : Employee
CREATE TABLE Employee
(
PersonID int,
ContactName varchar(255),
Address varchar(255),
City varchar(255)
);
INSERT INTO Employee(PersonID, ContactName, Address, City)
VALUES ('1001',', B. Bala','21, Car Street','Bangalore');
SELECT PersonID, ContactName, Address, City FROM Employee
Here the ContactName Column has a value ", B. Bala". I need to remove the comma and white-space at the beginning of the name.
Alas, SQL Server does not support the ANSI standard functionality of specifying the characters for LTRIM().
In this case, you can use:
(case when ContactName like ', %' then stuff(ContactName, 1, 2, '')
else ContactName
end)
You could potentially use PATINDEX() in order to get this done.
DECLARE #Text VARCHAR(50) = ', Well Crap';
SELECT STUFF(#Text, 1, PATINDEX('%[A-z]%', #Text) - 1, '');
This would output Well Crap. PATINDEX() will find first letter in your word and cut everything before it.
It works fine even if there's no leading rubbish:
DECLARE #Text VARCHAR(50) = 'Mister Roboto';
SELECT STUFF(#Text, 1, PATINDEX('%[A-z]%', #Text) - 1, '');
This outputs Mister Roboto
If there are no valid characters, let's say ContactName is , 9132124, :::, this would output NULL, if you'd like to get blank result, you can use COALESCE():
DECLARE #Text VARCHAR(50) = ', 9132124, :::';
SELECT COALESCE(STUFF(#Text, 1, PATINDEX('%[A-z]%', #Text) - 1, ''), '');
This will output an empty string.
You could also use REPLACE.....
eg.
REPLACE( ' ,Your String with space comma', ' ,', '')
UPDATE dbo.Employee
SET
dbo.Employee.ContactName = replace(LEFT(ContactName, 2),', ','')
+ SUBSTRING (ContactName, 3, len(contactname))
where LEFT(ContactName, 2)=', '
This will only update where first two character contains ', '
I am trying to get First name from employee table, in employee table full_name is like this: Dow, Mike P.
I tried with to get first name using below syntax but it comes with Middle initial - how to remove middle initial from first name if any. because not all name contain middle initial value.
-- query--
select Employee_First_Name as full_name,
SUBSTRING(
Employee_First_Name,
CHARINDEX(',', Employee_First_Name) + 1,
len(Employee_First_Name)) AS FirstName
---> remove middle initial from right side from employee
-- result
Full_name Firstname Dow,Mike P. Mike P.
--few example for Full_name data---
smith,joe j. --->joe (need result as)
smith,alan ---->alan (need result as)
Instead of specifying the len you need to use charindex again, but specify that you want the second occurrence of a space.
select Employee_First_Name as full_name,
SUBSTRING(
Employee_First_Name,
CHARINDEX(',', Employee_First_Name) + 1,
CHARINDEX(' ', Employee_First_Name, 2)) AS FirstName
One thing to note, the second charindex can return 0 if there is no second occurence. In that case, you would want to use something like the following:
select Employee_First_Name as full_name,
SUBSTRING(
Employee_First_Name,
CHARINDEX(',', Employee_First_Name) + 1,
IIF(CHARINDEX(' ', Employee_First_Name, 2) = 0, Len(Employee_First_name), CHARINDEX(' ', Employee_First_Name, 2))) AS FirstName
This removes the portion before the comma.. then uses that string and removes everything after space.
WITH cte AS (
SELECT *
FROM (VALUES('smith,joe j.'),('smith,alan'),('joe smith')) t(fullname)
)
SELECT
SUBSTRING(
LTRIM(SUBSTRING(fullname,CHARINDEX(',',fullname) + 1,LEN(fullname))),
0,
COALESCE(NULLIF(CHARINDEX(' ',LTRIM(SUBSTRING(fullname,CHARINDEX(',',fullname) + 1,LEN(fullname)))),0),LEN(fullname)))
FROM cte
output
------
joe
alan
joe
To be honest, this is most easily expressed using multiple levels of logic. One way is using outer apply:
select ttt.firstname
from t outer apply
(select substring(t.full_name, charindex(', ', t.full_name) + 2, len(t.full_name) as firstmi
) tt outer apply
(select (case when tt.firstmi like '% %'
then left(tt.firstmi, charindex(' ', tt.firstmi)
else tt.firstmi
end) as firstname
) as ttt
If you want to put this all in one complicated statement, I would suggest a computed column:
alter table t
add firstname as (stuff((case when full_name like '%, % %.',
then left(full_name,
charindex(' ', full_name, charindex(', ', full_name) + 2)
)
else full_name
end),
1,
charindex(', ', full_name) + 2,
'')
If format of this full_name field is the same for all rows, you may utilize power of SQL FTS word breaker for this task:
SELECT N'Dow, Mike P.' AS full_name INTO #t
SELECT display_term FROM #t
CROSS APPLY sys.dm_fts_parser(N'"' + full_name + N'"', 1033, NULL, 1) p
WHERE occurrence = 2
DROP TABLE #t
Ok so I have a table called PEOPLE that has a name column. In the name column is a name, but its totally a mess. For some reason its not listed such as last, first middle. It's sitting like last,first,middle and last first (and middle if there) are separated by a comma.. two commas if the person has a middle name.
example:
smith,steve
smith,steve,j
smith,ryan,tom
I'd like the second comma taken away (for parsing reason ) spaces put after existing first comma so the above would come out looking like:
smith, steve
smith, steve j
smith, ryan tom
Ultimately I'd like to be able to parse the names into first, middle, and last name fields, but that's for another post :_0. I appreciate any help.
thank you.
Drop table T1;
Create table T1(Name varchar(100));
Insert T1 Values
('smith,steve'),
('smith,steve,j'),
('smith,ryan,tom');
UPDATE T1
SET Name=
CASE CHARINDEX(',',name, CHARINDEX(',',name)+1) WHEN
0 THEN Name
ELSE
LEFT(name,CHARINDEX(',',name, CHARINDEX(',',name)+1)-1)+' ' +
RIGHT(name,LEN(Name)-CHARINDEX(',',name, CHARINDEX(',',name)+1))
END
Select * from T1
This seems to work. Not the most concise but avoids cursors.
DECLARE #people TABLE (name varchar(50))
INSERT INTO #people
SELECT 'smith,steve'
UNION
SELECT 'smith,steve,j'
UNION
SELECT 'smith,ryan,tom'
UNION
SELECT 'commaless'
SELECT name,
CASE
WHEN CHARINDEX(',',name) > 0 THEN
CASE
WHEN CHARINDEX(',',name,CHARINDEX(',',name) + 1) > 0 THEN
STUFF(STUFF(name, CHARINDEX(',',name,CHARINDEX(',',name) + 1), 1, ' '),CHARINDEX(',',name),1,', ')
ELSE
STUFF(name,CHARINDEX(',',name),1,', ')
END
ELSE name
END AS name2
FROM #people
Using a table function to split apart the names with a delimiter and for XML Path to stitch them back together, we can get what you're looking for! Hope this helps!
Declare #People table(FullName varchar(200))
Insert Into #People Values ('smith,steve')
Insert Into #People Values ('smith,steve,j')
Insert Into #People Values ('smith,ryan,tom')
Insert Into #People Values ('smith,john,joseph Jr')
Select p.*,stuff(fn.FullName,1,2,'') as ModifiedFullName
From #People p
Cross Apply (
select
Case When np.posID<=2 Then ', ' Else ' ' End+np.Val
From #People n
Cross Apply Custom.SplitValues(n.FullName,',') np
Where n.FullName=p.FullName
For XML Path('')
) fn(FullName)
Output:
ModifiedFullName
smith, steve
smith, steve j
smith, ryan tom
smith, john joseph Jr
SplitValues table function definition:
/*
This Function takes a delimited list of values and returns a table containing
each individual value and its position.
*/
CREATE FUNCTION [Custom].[SplitValues]
(
#List varchar(max)
, #Delimiter varchar(1)
)
RETURNS
#ValuesTable table
(
posID int
,val varchar(1000)
)
AS
BEGIN
WITH Cte AS
(
SELECT CAST('<v>' + REPLACE(#List, #Delimiter, '</v><v>') + '</v>' AS XML) AS val
)
INSERT #ValuesTable (posID,val)
SELECT row_number() over(Order By x) as posID, RTRIM(LTRIM(Split.x.value('.', 'VARCHAR(1000)'))) AS val
FROM Cte
CROSS APPLY val.nodes('/v') Split(x)
RETURN
END
GO
String manipulation in SQLServer, outside of writing your own User Defined Function, is limited but you can use the PARSENAME function for your purposes here. It takes a string, splits it on the period character, and returns the segment you specify.
Try this:
DECLARE #name VARCHAR(100) = 'smith,ryan,tom'
SELECT REVERSE(PARSENAME(REPLACE(REVERSE(#name), ',', '.'), 1)) + ', ' +
REVERSE(PARSENAME(REPLACE(REVERSE(#name), ',', '.'), 2)) +
COALESCE(' ' + REVERSE(PARSENAME(REPLACE(REVERSE(#name), ',', '.'), 3)), '')
Result: smith, ryan tom
If you set #name to 'smith,steve' instead, you'll get:
Result: smith, steve
Segment 1 actually gives you the last segment, segment 2 the second to last etc. Hence I've used REVERSE to get the order you want. In the case of 'steve,smith', segment 3 will be null, hence the COALESCE to add an empty string if that is the case. The REPLACE of course changes the commas to periods so that the split will work.
Note that this is a bit of a hack. PARSENAME will not work if there are more than four parts and this will fail if the name happens to contain a period. However if your data conforms to these limitations, hopefully it provides you with a solution.
Caveat: it sounds like your data may be inconsistently formatted. In that case, applying any automated treatment to it is going to be risky. However, you could try:
UPDATE people SET name = REPLACE(name, ',', ' ')
UPDATE people SET name = LEFT(name, CHARINDEX(' ', name)-1)+ ', '
+ RIGHT(name, LEN(name) - CHARINDEX(' ', name)
That'll work for the three examples you give. What it will do to the rest of your set is another question.
Here's an example with CHARINDEX() and SUBSTRING
WITH yourTable
AS
(
SELECT names
FROM
(
VALUES ('smith,steve'),('smith,steve,j'),('smith,ryan,tom')
) A(names)
)
SELECT names AS old,
CASE
WHEN comma > 0
THEN SUBSTRING(spaced_names,0,comma + 1) --before the comma
+ SUBSTRING(spaced_names,comma + 2,1000) --after the comma
ELSE spaced_names
END AS new
FROM yourTable
CROSS APPLY(SELECT CHARINDEX(',',names,CHARINDEX(',',names) + 1),REPLACE(names,',',', ')) AS CA(comma,spaced_names)
I am having FullName column and I am extracting the First Name and last name using the following query
select SUBSTRING(FULL_NAME, 1, CHARINDEX(' ', FULL_NAME) - 1) AS FirstName,
SUBSTRING(FULL_NAME, CHARINDEX(' ', FULL_NAME) + 1, 500) AS LastName
from [dbo].[TABLE]
But in the Full Name column there are just First names, some 10 digit phone numbers, 4 digit extensions and some text like 'this is a special case'.
How should I modify my query to accommodate these exceptions? And also when there are only single words in the Full Name column I am getting this following error message:
"Invalid length parameter passed to the LEFT or SUBSTRING function."
Parsing good names from free form fields is not an easy task...
I would suggest a dual approach.
Identify common patterns, i.e. you might find phone number with something like this
Where IsNumeric( Replace(Field,'-','')=1
and you might identify single names with
Where charindex(' ',trim(field))=0
etc.
Once you've identified them, the write code to attempt to split them...
So you might use the code you have above with the following WHERE clause
select SUBSTRING(FULL_NAME, 1, CHARINDEX(' ', FULL_NAME) - 1) AS FirstName,
SUBSTRING(PRQ_BP_CONTACT_NAME, CHARINDEX(' ', FULL_NAME) + 1, 500)
AS LastN
from [dbo].[TABLE]
where charindex(' ',trim(field))>0 and Where IsNumeric( Replace(Field,'-','')=0
Use the WHERE clauses to (a) make sure you only get records you can parse and (b) help identify the oddball cases you'll like need to do by hand...
Good luck
You could go with a function this allows you to put in any logic you need in the transform and keep things a bit more readable :
create function dbo.namepart( #fullname varchar(50), #part varchar(5))
returns varchar(10)
as
begin
declare #first varchar(50)
declare #last varchar(50)
declare #sp int
if #fullname like '%special value%' return ''
if #fullname like '% %'
begin
set #sp = CHARINDEX(' ', #fullname)
set #first = left(#fullname, #sp - 1)
set #last = substring(#fullname,#sp + 1 ,50)
if isnumeric(#last) <> 0 set #last = ''
end
else
begin
set #first = #fullname
set #last = ''
end
if #part like 'f%'
return #first
else
return #last
return ''
end
Sample data
create table blah(
full_name varchar(50)
)
insert into blah values ( 'john smith' ), ('paul 12345'),('evan'),('special value')
And see if it works
select
dbo.namepart(full_name,'first') first,
dbo.namepart(full_name,'last') last,
full_name
from blah
http://sqlfiddle.com/#!6/eb28f/2