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String matching woes

Author

Topic

Debbie2
Starting Member

11 Posts

Posted - 2006-09-20 : 04:27:05

I have this code:

or @charname LIKE 'GM%'
or @charname LIKE '[^a-z]GM%'
or @charname LIKE '[^a-z][^a-z]GM%'
or @charname LIKE '[^a-z][^a-z][^a-z]GM%'
or @charname LIKE '[^a-z][^a-z][^a-z][^a-z]GM%'

Is there a cleaner way of writing that? If MSSQL supported true regexps I'd be able to write:

or @charname LIKE '[^a-z]+GM%'

Basically I want to test whether the string starts with "GM", not counting non-alphabetical characters.

chiragkhabaria
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker

1907 Posts

Posted - 2006-09-20 : 04:35:16

have a look at the following links
http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtech/regularexpressions.shtml
http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=27205&SearchTerms=expressions
http://blogs.msdn.com/khen1234/archive/2005/05/11/416392.aspx

Chirag

SwePeso
Patron Saint of Lost Yaks

30421 Posts

Posted - 2006-09-20 : 05:00:33

Here is a test

declare @test table (data varchar(100))

insert	@test
select	'gm' union all
select	'#gm' union all
select	'agm' union all
select	'%t t gm' union all
select	' gm' union all
select	'!gm' union all
select	'ogm' union all
select	'_gm'

select *,
patindex('[^a-z]gm%', data )
from @test

Peter Larsson
Helsingborg, Sweden

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