SQLServerCentral / Article Discussions / Article Discussions by Author / Discuss content posted by Atif Sheikh / Trim Non-Alpha characters from string / Latest Posts

RE: Trim Non-Alpha characters from string

Adam Sottosanti — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 09:12:10 GMT

Thanks for the script, I like they way you created the tally table on the fly lilke that, I never thought of doing that! Here is what I've been using to do the same thing, it's pretty easy to modify to include/exclude numerics, spaces, certain special characters etc... which is why I like it. [code="sql"]DECLARE @data VARCHAR(100)SET @data = '!2131231Atif123123 234234Sheikh6546'WHILE PATINDEX('%[^a-z ]%', @data) > 0 SET @data = STUFF(@data, PATINDEX('%[^a-z ]%', @data), 1, '') SELECT RTRIM(LTRIM(@data)) AS Data[/code]Thanks again!

RE: Trim Non-Alpha characters from string

James Zimmerman — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:36:18 GMT

Thank you for this example. If you do much data cleansing or string manipulation, keep in mind that you can implement regular expression functionality in SQL Server 2005 and above. It's easier than I thought it would be, assuming your DBA allows you to enable CLR integration.This article lays it out very well:[url]http://justgeeks.blogspot.com/2008/08/adding-regular-expressions-regex-to-sql.html[/url]

RE: Trim Non-Alpha characters from string

katedgrt — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:22:50 GMT

I did get an error applying to a nullable column. (LEN=0; Error was "TOP clause contains an invalid value.") Because I'm in a hurry I just threw a case statement around the function call but a clause in the function to work around that would be a nice enhancement.

RE: Trim Non-Alpha characters from string

katedgrt — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:12:37 GMT

Very nice. Just so happens I was bemoaning having to write a 'strip non-numeric characters' function today. You probably saved me an hour! :D

RE: Trim Non-Alpha characters from string

Tom Garth — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 07:47:58 GMT

Pretty cool.

Trim Non-Alpha characters from string

Atif-ullah Sheikh — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:32:52 GMT

Comments posted to this topic are about the item [B]Trim Non-Alpha characters from string[/B]