The emp table below has no ENAME ending in three spaces. However, the following SQL statement behaves like the clause is trimmed at the end (like a '%' pattern), because it returns all records:
select ENAME from dbo.emp where ENAME like '% '
I tried many other database platforms (including SQL Server, SQL Anywhere, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL etc), I've seen this happening only in Sybase/SAP ASE (version 16). Is this a bug or is it "by design"? Nothing specific found in the online spec in this regard.
I'm looking for a generic fix, to apply some simple transformation to the pattern and return what is expected from any other platform. Without knowing in advance what data type the field is or what kind of data it holds.
This is caused by the VARCHAR semantics in ASE, which will always strip leading spaces from a value before operating on it. This is applied to the string '% ' before it is used, since that is a VARCHAR value by definition. This is indeed a particular semantic of ASE.
Now, you could try working around this by using the [ ] wildcard to match a space, but there are some things to be aware of. First, the column being matched (ENAME) must be CHAR, not VARCHAR, otherwise any trialing spaces will have been stripped as well before they were stored. Assuming the column is CHAR, then using a pattern '%[ ][ ][ ]' unfortunately still does not appear to work. I think there may be some trailing-space-stripping still happening here.
The best way to work around this is to use an artificial end-of-field delimiter which will not occur in the data, e.g.
ENAME||'~EOF~' like '% ~EOF~'
This works. But note that the column ENAME must still be CHAR rather than VARCHAR.
Like behavior is somehow documented in here .
For VARCHAR columns this will never work because ASE removes the trailing spaces
For CHAR it depends how do you insert the data.. in a char(10) column , if you insert 2 characters , ASE will add 8 blank spaces after the 2 characters to make them 10 .. so when you query , you will get this 2 characters entry as part of the result set because it includes more than 3 trailing spaces..
If this is not a problem for you, instead of like you can use char_index () which will count the trailing spaces and won't truncate them as like, so you could write something like :
select ENAME from dbo.emp where char_index(' ',ENAME) >0
Or you can calculate the trailing spaces , then check if your 3 spaces come after that or not , like :
select a from A
where charindex(' ',a) > (len(a) - len(convert (varchar(10) , a)))
Now again, this will get you more rows than expected if the data were inserted in a non-uniform count, but will work perfectly if you know exactly what to search for.
SELECT ename from dbo.emp where RIGHT(ENAME ,3) = ' '
Related
I have a string like "Column";"Column";"Column".
However, several times I see:
"Column";"Column;";"Column"
(Notice the extra semicolon in the second field).
Is it possible to find all instances where a semicolon (;) is not surrounded by double quotes (") and replace these with nothing?
something like replace(#string,'[a-z][0-9];','') ?
"Column";"Column;";"Column" turns into "Column";"Column";"Column"
"Value";"Value;";"Value" turns into "Value";"Value";"Value"
"Something";";Something else;";"Another ;thing" turns into "Something";"Something else";"Another thing"
Without knowing your table's definition, this is a vague answer.
In SQL Server 2017 (if I recall correctly), support for CSV formats were added to BULK INSERT, meaning that you could specify both your column and row separators and quote identifiers. For the above, this would mean your FIELDTERMINATOR would need the value ';' and the FIELDQUOTE would need the value '"'. This will, however, leave the remaining ; characters that are surrounded in double quotes.
As such, what I would propose is to create a staging table, where all the columns are a (n)varchar, BULK INSERT your data into that and then INSERT the data into your production table, with REPLACE operators to remove the remaining ; characters and strongly typing them.
In pseudo-SQL this would look like something like this:
BULK INSERT Staging.YourTable
FROM 'C:\YourFilePath\YourFile.txt'
WITH (FORMAT='CSV',
FIELDQUOTE='"',
FIELDTERMINATOR=';');
INSERT INTO Production.YourTable (Column1, Column2, Column3, Column4)
SELECT REPLACE(Column1,';',''),
TRY_CONVERT(int,REPLACE(Column2,';','')),
TRY_CONVERT(date,REPLACE(Column3,';',''),103),
REPLACE(Column4,';','')
FROM Staging.YourTable;
Not sure if this is oversimplification, but if you really have that string in a #string then I see no reason this shouldn't work:
replace(#string, ';";"', '";"')
I have a table that was given to me with some 'incorrect' data. The format of the data should be:
"000 00000"
There are TWO spaces. WHERE the spaces are can be different for different records, so for example one record could be the previous example and another could be "00 00 0000". The problem is that the data came in, in some instances with only a single space. (so "000 00000").
Ideally, id like to do this in a query to fix the data that's been loaded via an update statement. If this is easier done outside of oracle, that's fine, I can re-load the data (its a bit of data, at almost 400,000 rows).
What would be the easiest way to find the single space and add another as needed, or leave it alone if there are already two spaces?
I am currently working on a query to split the string ON the spaces, trim the data then put it all back together with 2 spaces.... its not working out too well in testing.
Thanks in advance!
here is the query to find single space record , try making CASE statement as needed.
WITH sample_data AS (SELECT '000 00000' value FROM dual UNION ALL
SELECT '00 00 0000' value FROM dual UNION ALL
SELECT '000 00000' value FROM dual )
Select * from sample_data where REGEXP_COUNT(VALUE,'[[:space:]]') =1
I'm using Mariadb and have the table setup with VARCHAR(30). When I insert a string containing numbers like "192" and then select it I'm able to print out 192. When I insert a string like "a48" it just seems to be ignored. I've tried inserting a complete letter string "a" and I still get nothing. In the Mariadb documentation for VARCHAR(M) I found this:
"If a unique index consists of a column where trailing pad characters are stripped or ignored, inserts into that column where values differ only by the number of trailing pad characters will result in a duplicate-key error"
I'm not sure if that could have anything to do with it? I am using letters just to make it easier to parse the data on my client side program. If I don't find a solution I will probably just pad it on the server after selecting.
Does anybody have any suggestions on what's going on here, or things I could try to find the problem?
Assuming that melon is the column to receive the string, then you should put single quotes around the $melon variable in the query, like this:
query("REPLACE INTO state (id, melon, image) VALUES (1, '$melon', $image)");
String values should be surrounded by single quotes; numeric values don't need to be.
Because the target column is a varchar(30) the value should always be surrounded by single quotes. MariaDB works out what you mean when you supply a numeric value, but it doesn't understand an alphanumeric value without single quotes. Both will work if you use single quotes, as shown.
To avoid SQL injection errors, it is better to use prepared statements, as described at https://www.w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_prepared_statements.asp.
This is not your average vlookup error.
I have two Power Query tables that I've setup. One is coming from a CSV file with a list of names. The other is from a website pulling a list of names.
i.e.
=John Smith = John Smith would not be true for some reason.
They vlookup should be able to find the name easily. I've tried proper,upper, clean, trimming and text to columns and everything else that I could think of. I've changed data types to no avail.
I know that one query is causing the issue. I can type the name exactly and do a vlookup from one, and it works. The second query that I do this to doesn't return anything on the typed text.
Anyone encounter this issue while using Power Query?
EDIT: See Jeeped's Answer - When I replace the space from the web query with a normal space it works.
#Jeeped's comment has a good answer:
Assuming you have already trimmed off leading and trailing spaces, one of the John Smith entries (likely the one from the web) uses a non-breaking space (e.e. CHAR(160) or ASCII 0×A0) instead of a regular space (e.g CHAR(32) or ASCII 0×20). Use
=CODE(MID(A$1, ROW(1:1), 1))
on both, fill down to get a ASCII code for each letter and compare the numbers.
Working on postgres SQL.
I have a table with a column that contains values of the following format:
Set1/Set2/Set3/...
Seti can be a set of values for each i. They are delimited by '/'.
I would like to show distinct entries of the form set1/set2 and that is - I would like to trim or truncate the rest of the string in those entries.
That is, I want all distinct options for:
Set1/Set2
A regular expression would work great: I want a substring of the pattern: .*/.*/
to be displayed without the rest of it.
I got as far as:
select distinct column_name from table_name
but I have no idea how to make the trimming itself.
Tried looking in w3schools and other sites as well as searching SQL trim / SQL truncate in google but didn't find what I'm looking for.
Thanks in advance.
mu is too short's answer is fine if the the lengths of the strings between the forward slashes is always consistent. Otherwise you'll want to use a regex with the substring function.
For example:
=> select substring('Set1/Set2/Set3/' from '^[^/]+/[^/]+');
substring
-----------
Set1/Set2
(1 row)
=> select substring('Set123/Set24/Set3/' from '^[^/]+/[^/]+');
substring
--------------
Set123/Set24
(1 row)
So your query on the table would become:
select distinct substring(column_name from '^[^/]+/[^/]+') from table_name;
The relevant docs are http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/functions-string.html
and http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/functions-matching.html.
Why do you store multiple values in a single record? The preferred solution would be multiple values in multiple records, your problem would not exist anymore.
Another option would be the usage of an array of values, using the TEXT[] array-datatype instead of TEXT. You can index an array field using the GIN-index.
SUBSTRING() (like mu_is_too_short showed you) can solve the current problem, using an array and the array functions is another option:
SELECT array_to_string(
(string_to_array('Set1/Set2/Set3/', '/'))[1:2], '/' );
This makes it rather flexible, there is no need for a fixed length of the values. The separator in the array functions will do the job. The [1:2] will pick the first 2 slices of the array, using [1:3] would pick slices 1 to 3. This makes it easy to change.
If they really are that regular you could use substring; for example:
=> select substring('Set1/Set2/Set3/' from 1 for 9);
substring
-----------
Set1/Set2
(1 row)
There is also a version of substring that understands POSIX regular expressions if you need a little more flexibility.
The PostgreSQL online documentation is quite good BTW:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/index.html
and it even has a usable index and sensible navigation.
If you want to use .*/.* then you'd want something like substring(s from '[^/]+/[^/]+'), for example:
=> select substring('where/is/pancakes/house?' from '[^/]+/[^/]+');
substring
-----------
where/is
(1 row)