I have a trim function that apply ltrim and rtrim
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.TRIM(#string VARCHAR(MAX))
RETURNS VARCHAR(MAX)
BEGIN
RETURN LTRIM(RTRIM(#string))
END
GO
I do the following query:
SELECT distinct dbo.trim([subject]) as subject
FROM [DISTR]
The result has rows like:
"A"
"A "
"B"
...
I thought that thoose chars maybe weren't spaces but when I got the ascii code, it returns 32 which is the code for space.
My only guess is that I had to change the collaction of the database to: SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI
Can that be the problem? Any ideas?
Thanks
Maybe your field contains more than spaces. Remember than " " could be a space, tab, and many other "blank" chars. It's possible to match it using ASCII or building a CLR implementation of trim that uses regular expressions
Related
I inserted a bunch of rows with a text field like content='...\n...\n...'.
I didn't use e in front, like conent=e'...\n...\n..., so now \n is not actually displayed as a newline - it's printed as text.
How do I fix this, i.e. how to change every row's content field from '...' to e'...'?
The syntax variant E'string' makes Postgres interpret the given string as Posix escape string. \n encoding a newline is only one of many interpreted escape sequences (even if the most common one). See:
Insert text with single quotes in PostgreSQL
To "re-evaluate" your Posix escape string, you could use a simple function with dynamic SQL like this:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION f_eval_posix_escapes(INOUT _string text)
LANGUAGE plpgsql AS
$func$
BEGIN
EXECUTE 'SELECT E''' || _string || '''' INTO _string;
END
$func$;
WARNING 1: This is inherently unsafe! We have to evaluate input strings dynamically without quoting and escaping, which allows SQL injection. Only use this in a safe environment.
WARNING 2: Don't apply repeatedly. Or it will misinterpret your actual string with genuine \ characters, etc.
WARNING 3: This simple function is imperfect as it cannot cope with nested single quotes properly. If you have some of those, consider instead:
Unescape a string with escaped newlines and carriage returns
Apply:
UPDATE tbl
SET content = f_eval_posix_escapes(content)
WHERE content IS DISTINCT FROM f_eval_posix_escapes(content);
db<>fiddle here
Note the added WHERE clause to skip updates that would not change anything. See:
How do I (or can I) SELECT DISTINCT on multiple columns?
Use REPLACE in an update query. Something like this: (I'm on mobile so please ignore any typo or syntax erro)
UPDATE table
SET
column = REPLACE(column, '\n', e'\n')
I am trying to find a solution but somehow i am getting wrong output (referred some online solutions and confusing myself. please advise where i am going wrong.
I need to Strip out any characters that is non-numeric,dash "-" or pipe "|" using plsql.
As an example:
if I need to filter the string 0094-78556232_imk*.ext|4444; the output should be 0094-78556232|4444
Use REGEXP_REPLACE:
SELECT
col,
REGEXP_REPLACE (col, '[^0-9|-]', '') AS col_updated
FROM yourTable;
Demo
Don't use regexp_replace, especially if performance is important.
Instead use the standard string function TRANSLATE. Like so:
select col,
translate(col, '0123456789|-' || col, '01234567890|-') as col_updated
from yourTable;
This translates each character in the col value, according to the following scheme: 0 is translated to itself, ...., - is translated to itself. Any other character in col, which is not in this list already, is "translated" to nothing, since there is nothing for it to be translated to in the third argument to the function. So those characters that are NOT on the list are simply removed from the string.
I have registration codes in my PostgreSQL table which are written messy, like MU-321-AB, MU/321/AB, MU 321-AB and so forth...
I would need to clear all of this to get MU321AB.
For this I uses following expression:
SELECT DISTINCT regexp_replace(ccode, '([^A-Za-z0-9])', ''), ...
This expression work as expected in 'NET' but not in PostgreSQL where it 'clears' only first occurrence of unwanted character.
How would I modify regular expression which will replace all unwanted chars in string to get clear code with only letters and numbers?
Use the global flag, but without any capture groups:
SELECT DISTINCT regexp_replace(ccode, '[^A-Za-z0-9]', '', 'g'), ...
Note that the global flag is part of the standard regular expression parser, so .NET is not following the standard in this case. Also, since you do not want anything extracted from the string - you just want to replace some characters - you should not use capture groups ().
I want to list the trigger no system ending with "_BI" in firebird database,
but no result with this
select * from rdb$triggers
where
rdb$trigger_source is not null
and (coalesce(rdb$system_flag,0) = 0)
and (rdb$trigger_source not starting with 'CHECK' )
and (rdb$trigger_name like '%BI')
but with this syntaxs it gives me a "_bi" and "_BI0U" and "_BI0U" ending result
and (rdb$trigger_name like '%BI%')
but with this syntaxs it gives me null result
and (rdb$trigger_name like '%#_BI')
thank you beforehand
The problem is that the Firebird system tables use CHAR(31) for object names, this means that they are padded with spaces up to the declared length. As a result, use of like '%BI') will not yield results, unless BI are the 30th and 31st character.
There are several solutions
For example you can trim the name before checking
trim(rdb$trigger_name) like '%BI'
or you can require that the name is followed by at least one space
rdb$trigger_name || ' ' like '%BI %'
On a related note, if you want to check if your trigger name ends in _BI, then you should also include the underscore in your condition. And as an underscore in like is a single character matcher, you need to escape it:
trim(rdb$trigger_name) like '%\_BI' escape '\'
Alternatively you could also try to use a regular expressions, as you won't need to trim or otherwise mangle the lefthand side of the expression:
rdb$trigger_name similar to '%\_BI[[:SPACE:]]*' escape '\'
What is wrong with this statement that it is still giving me spaces after the field. This makes me think that the syntax combining the WHEN statements is off. My boss wants them combined in one statement. What am I doing wrong?
Case WHEN LTRIM(RTRIM(cSHortName))= '' Then NULL
WHEN cShortname is NOT NULL THEN
REPLACE (cShortName,SUBSTRING,(cShortName,PATINDEX('%A-Za-z0-9""},1,) ''_
end AS SHORT_NAME
Judging from the code, it seems that you may be trying to strip spaces and non-alphanumeric characters from the beginning and ending of the string.
If so, would this work for you?
I think it provides the substring from the first alphanumeric occurrence to the last.
SELECT
SUBSTRING(
cShortName,
PATINDEX('%A-Za-z0-9',cShortName),
( LEN(cShortName)
-PATINDEX('%A-Za-z0-9',REVERSE(cShortName))
-PATINDEX('%A-Za-z0-9',cShortName)
)
) AS SHORTNAME
Replace TRIM with LTRIM.
You can also test LEN(cShortName) = 0
Ummm there seems to be some problems in this script, but try this.
Case
WHEN LTRIM(RTRIM(cSHortName))= '' Then NULL
WHEN cShortname is NOT NULL THEN REPLACE(cShortName, SUBSTRING(cShortName, PATINDEX('%A-Za-z0-9', 1) , ''), '')
end AS SHORT_NAME
Why do you think it is supposed not to give you spaces after the field?
Edit:
As far as I understand you are trying to remove any characters from the string that do not match this regular expression range [a-zA-Z0-9] (add any other characters that you want to preserve).
I see no clean way to do that in Microsoft SQL Server (you are using Microsoft SQL Server it seems) using the built-in functions. There are some examples on the web that use a temporary table and a while loop, but this is ugly. I would either return the strings as is and process them on the caller side, or write a function that does that using the CLR and invoke it from the select statement.
I hope this helps.