Substr in sql

Problem One common problem that Microsoft SQL Server Developers face is the need to extract a portion of a string from a larger text field to display the information in a more concise format or perform calculations/analysis on a specific substring of the data. How do you extract only a specific portion of the string in SQL Server? This tutorial will discuss the SQL Server SUBSTRING function with various T-SQL examples. SUBSTRING (input_string, start_position, length) Here's what each of the parameters means: • input_string: string you want to extract a substring from • start_position: position of input_string you want to begin extracting the substring (1 is the first position of the string) • length: number of characters you want to extract from the input_string, starting from the start_position. The SUBSTRING function returns the following data types based on the input data type: Input Data Type Return Data Type Char, Varchar, Text Varchar Nchar, Nvarchar, Ntext Nvarchar Binary,varbinary, image varbinary Following are some examples of using the SQL Server SUBSTRING function. Extracting a Substring from a String Here is a basic example. The output of this query is "MSSQLTIPS" because the SUBSTRING function is extracting a substring that starts at position 1 in the input string and has a length of 9 characters. EExtract Substring from a Column in a Table In the following example, we extract a substring from the column [FirstName] of the [Person].[Person] table with a specif...

Below is my query, I am looking to pull records where only the substring value (which will be YYYY) is less than current year - 25 years.... and I should mention that this field is varchar and probably needs to be converted which I haven't been able to do successfully either. SELECT AccountNumber, LoanPrimeLongName, convert (varchar,LoanOpenDate,103)LoanOpenDate, LoanOriginalBalance, LoanBalance, LoanInterestRate, LoanRemainingTermMonths, LoanDelqDays, LoanDescription FROM ARCU.ARCULoanDetailed WHERE (((LOANTYPE = '15' OR LOANTYPE = '16' OR LoanType = '17') AND LoanStatus = 'Open') AND ProcessDate = (CONVERT(VARCHAR, GETDATE(), 112)-1)) AND (SUBSTRING (loandescription,1,4) not like '%[^0-9]%') ORDER BY AccountNumber Since we don't know which RDBMS you are using, I'm going to go with the simplest answer. This assumes you're using MSSQL. Use the SUBSTRING(loandescription,1,4) is actually a number. If it is, then you can cast/convert it at that point and compare it to the "year" you're interested in. IE: ... ProcessDate = (CONVERT(VARCHAR, GETDATE(), 112)-1)) AND (ISNUMERIC(SUBSTRING(loandescription,1,4)) = 1 AND CAST(SUBSTRING(loandescription,1,4) AS INT) = (YEAR(GETDATE()) - 25)) Due to boolean short circuiting, if the first 4 characters AREN'T numeric, then it won't bother casting to compare. Same rule applies with other RDBMS systems (such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, etc), but the methods might be a bit different. In fact, I don't think MySQL or PostgreSQL even have the...

create table names ( id INT, name VARCHAR(50), age INT, gender VARCHAR(50) ); insert into names (id, name, age, gender) values (1, 'Bret Starkings', 55, 'M'); insert into names (id, name, age, gender) values (2, 'Bobbye Eyckel', 76, 'F'); insert into names (id, name, age, gender) values (3, 'Barbie Veschi', 50, 'F'); insert into names (id, name, age, gender) values (4, 'Electra Blazewicz', 47, 'F'); We use the SUBSTR() function to get back a portion of the name column. The syntax of the function is as follows: SUBSTR(column_name, position, num_letters); The function takes three parameters: the column or string we want to extrapolate the substring from, a one-based start position in the string (indexing that starts at 1 instead of 0), and the number of character length. If we do this on the name column, the SQL Statement comes out as: SELECT name, SUBSTR(name, 1, 4) AS NAME_SUBSTRING, age, gender FROM names; And the code results in: name NAME_SUBSTRING age gender Bret Starkings Bret 55 M Bobbye Eyckel Bobb 76 F Barbie Veschi Barb 50 F Electra Blazewicz Elec 47 F Estrella Borleace Estr 57 F The third parameter in this function can be left off if you choose: SELECT name, SUBSTR(name, 4) AS NAME_SUBSTRING, age, gender FROM names; name NAME_SUBSTRING age gender Bret Starkings t Starkings 55 M Bobbye Eyckel bye Eyckel 76 F Barbie Veschi bie Veschi 50 F Electra Blazewicz ctra Blazewicz 47 F Estrella Borleace rella Borleace 57 F You can also use negative values for the position: S...

Using string functions: SUBSTR(), TRIM(), UPPER(), LOWER() Using LIKE for partial matches can be pretty powerful, but as we’ve seen, patterns aren’t exactly beach reading. Another way to do partial matching is to use string functions to manipulate the values. String functions usually take the form of a keyword followed by parentheses. The parentheses contain any arguments we want to pass to the function. The general format looks like this: KEYWORD (ARG1, ARG2, ARG3). Usually the first argument is the string we want to manipulate. Here are some commonly used string functions: SUBSTR() The SUBSTR() function takes the string we hand it in the parentheses and returns a part of the string that we define (ergo, substring). As we’ll see with other string functions, this string argument can be - and typically is - the name of a column in a table. This gives us the power to manipulate all the values for a given column (or perhaps a limited subset). To determine which part of the string to return, SUBSTR() accepts a few additional arguments beyond the field that we’re targeting: • the starting point of the desired substring (counting characters from the left) • the number of characters to grab from that starting point The full function call takes this form: SUBSTR (STRING, START_POINT, LENGTH). The third argument is optional. If we leave it off, SUBSTR() returns all characters from the given starting point to the end of the string. An example is probably more helpful. So, here is th...

Arguments base_expr This must be a VARCHAR or BINARY value. start_expr The start position should be an expression that evaluates to an integer. It specifies the offset from which the substring starts. The offset is measured in: • The number of UTF-8 characters if the input is VARCHAR. • The number of bytes if the input is BINARY. The start position is 1-based, not 0-based. SUBSTR('abc', 1, 1) returns ‘a’, not ‘b’. length_expr The length should be an expression that evaluates to an integer. It should specify: • The number of UTF-8 characters to return if the input is VARCHAR. • The number of bytes to return if the input is BINARY. The length should be greater than or equal to zero. If the length is a negative number, the function returns an empty string. • If 0 is specified, it is treated as 1. • If a negative value is specified, the starting position is computed as the start_expr characters/bytes from the end of the string or binary value. If the position is outside of the range of a string or binary value, an empty value is returned. • If any of the inputs are NULL, NULL is returned. Collation Details • Collation applies to VARCHAR inputs. Collation does not apply if the input data type of the first parameter is BINARY. • No impact. Although collation is accepted syntactically, collations have no impact on processing. For example, languages with two-character and three-character letters (e.g. “dzs” in Hungarian, “ch” in Czech) still count those as two or three characters ...

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to use the SQL SUBSTRING function to extract a substring from a string. Introduction to the SQL SUBSTRING function The SUBSTRING function extracts a substring that starts at a specified position with a given length. The following illustrates the syntax of the SUBSTRING function. SUBSTRING(source_string, position, length); Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) ( sql ) The SUBSTRING function accepts three arguments: • The source_string is the string from which you want to extract the substring. • The position is the starting position where the substring begins. The first position of the string is one (1). • The length is the length of the substring. The length argument is optional. Most relational database systems implement the SUBSTRING function with the same functionality. SQL SUBSTRING function examples The following example returns a substring starting at position 1 with length 3. substring ----------- Tutorial (1 row) Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) ( sql ) The following statement uses the POSITION function to return the position of the dot character (.) in the string. The result of the POSITION function is passed to the SUBSTRING function to find the extension of a domain:

Previous Page | Next Page The SQL Procedure Returns a part of a character expression. SUBSTRING (sql-expression FROM start) • sql-expression must be a character string and is described in • start is a number (not a variable or column name) that specifies the position, counting from the left end of the character string, at which to begin extracting the substring. • length is a number (not a variable or column name) that specifies the length of the substring that is to be extracted. The SUBSTRING function operates on character strings. SUBSTRING returns a specified part of the input character string, beginning at the position that is specified by start. If length is omitted, then the SUBSTRING function returns all characters from start to the end of the input character string. The values of start and length must be numbers (not variables) and can be positive, negative, or zero. If start is greater than the length of the input character string, then the SUBSTRING function returns a zero-length string. If start is less than 1, then the SUBSTRING function begins extraction at the beginning of the input character string. If length is specified, then the sum of start and length cannot be less than start or an error is returned. If the sum of start and length is greater than the length of the input character string, then the SUBSTRING function returns all characters from start to the end of the input character string. If the sum of start and length is less than 1, then the SUBSTRI...

Using string functions: SUBSTR(), TRIM(), UPPER(), LOWER() Using LIKE for partial matches can be pretty powerful, but as we’ve seen, patterns aren’t exactly beach reading. Another way to do partial matching is to use string functions to manipulate the values. String functions usually take the form of a keyword followed by parentheses. The parentheses contain any arguments we want to pass to the function. The general format looks like this: KEYWORD (ARG1, ARG2, ARG3). Usually the first argument is the string we want to manipulate. Here are some commonly used string functions: SUBSTR() The SUBSTR() function takes the string we hand it in the parentheses and returns a part of the string that we define (ergo, substring). As we’ll see with other string functions, this string argument can be - and typically is - the name of a column in a table. This gives us the power to manipulate all the values for a given column (or perhaps a limited subset). To determine which part of the string to return, SUBSTR() accepts a few additional arguments beyond the field that we’re targeting: • the starting point of the desired substring (counting characters from the left) • the number of characters to grab from that starting point The full function call takes this form: SUBSTR (STRING, START_POINT, LENGTH). The third argument is optional. If we leave it off, SUBSTR() returns all characters from the given starting point to the end of the string. An example is probably more helpful. So, here is th...

Below is my query, I am looking to pull records where only the substring value (which will be YYYY) is less than current year - 25 years.... and I should mention that this field is varchar and probably needs to be converted which I haven't been able to do successfully either. SELECT AccountNumber, LoanPrimeLongName, convert (varchar,LoanOpenDate,103)LoanOpenDate, LoanOriginalBalance, LoanBalance, LoanInterestRate, LoanRemainingTermMonths, LoanDelqDays, LoanDescription FROM ARCU.ARCULoanDetailed WHERE (((LOANTYPE = '15' OR LOANTYPE = '16' OR LoanType = '17') AND LoanStatus = 'Open') AND ProcessDate = (CONVERT(VARCHAR, GETDATE(), 112)-1)) AND (SUBSTRING (loandescription,1,4) not like '%[^0-9]%') ORDER BY AccountNumber Since we don't know which RDBMS you are using, I'm going to go with the simplest answer. This assumes you're using MSSQL. Use the SUBSTRING(loandescription,1,4) is actually a number. If it is, then you can cast/convert it at that point and compare it to the "year" you're interested in. IE: ... ProcessDate = (CONVERT(VARCHAR, GETDATE(), 112)-1)) AND (ISNUMERIC(SUBSTRING(loandescription,1,4)) = 1 AND CAST(SUBSTRING(loandescription,1,4) AS INT) = (YEAR(GETDATE()) - 25)) Due to boolean short circuiting, if the first 4 characters AREN'T numeric, then it won't bother casting to compare. Same rule applies with other RDBMS systems (such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, etc), but the methods might be a bit different. In fact, I don't think MySQL or PostgreSQL even have the...

Problem One common problem that Microsoft SQL Server Developers face is the need to extract a portion of a string from a larger text field to display the information in a more concise format or perform calculations/analysis on a specific substring of the data. How do you extract only a specific portion of the string in SQL Server? This tutorial will discuss the SQL Server SUBSTRING function with various T-SQL examples. SUBSTRING (input_string, start_position, length) Here's what each of the parameters means: • input_string: string you want to extract a substring from • start_position: position of input_string you want to begin extracting the substring (1 is the first position of the string) • length: number of characters you want to extract from the input_string, starting from the start_position. The SUBSTRING function returns the following data types based on the input data type: Input Data Type Return Data Type Char, Varchar, Text Varchar Nchar, Nvarchar, Ntext Nvarchar Binary,varbinary, image varbinary Following are some examples of using the SQL Server SUBSTRING function. Extracting a Substring from a String Here is a basic example. The output of this query is "MSSQLTIPS" because the SUBSTRING function is extracting a substring that starts at position 1 in the input string and has a length of 9 characters. EExtract Substring from a Column in a Table In the following example, we extract a substring from the column [FirstName] of the [Person].[Person] table with a specif...