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Query Help....

Author

Topic

sqldba20
Posting Yak Master

183 Posts

Posted - 2012-02-27 : 10:41:26

Folks:

I have a column which stores data in this format:

TR#ABC#10/12/2011
TR#XYZ#12/12/2011
TR#ABC#10/12/2011

I would like to remove the text before and after #. The output should be:

ABC
XYZ
ABC

Thanks !

Transact Charlie
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker

3451 Posts

Posted - 2012-02-27 : 10:58:32

This should work (and be safe). As long as there are no strings with three # in them.



DECLARE @foo TABLE (
	[val] VARCHAR(255)
	)
INSERT @foo ([val])
VALUES
	('TR#ABC#10/12/2011')
	, ('tr')
	, ('TR##fsafasf')
	, ('#asdasda#')
	, ('TR#asfasfasfasf')


SELECT
	[val]
	, CASE WHEN CHARINDEX('#', [sval]) = 0 THEN NULL
		   ELSE LEFT([sval], CHARINDEX('#', [sval]) - 1)
		   END AS [StrippedVal]
FROM
	(
	SELECT
		[val] AS [val]
		, CASE WHEN CHARINDEX('#', [val]) = 0 THEN NULL
			   ELSE RIGHT([val], LEN([val]) - CHARINDEX('#', [val]))
			   END AS [sval]
	FROM
		@foo 
	)
	AS r

Results




(5 row(s) affected)
val                  StrippedVal
-------------------- --------------------
TR#ABC#10/12/2011    ABC
tr                   NULL
TR##fsafasf          
#asdasda#            asdasda
TR#asfasfasfasf      NULL

(5 row(s) affected)

Charlie
===============================================================
Msg 3903, Level 16, State 1, Line 1736
The ROLLBACK TRANSACTION request has no corresponding BEGIN TRANSACTION

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