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Home » Article Discussions » Article Discussions by Author » Discuss content posted by dcawvive » Substring comprehension
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dcawvive
Posted Saturday, October 31, 2009 1:20 PM
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Comments posted to this topic are about the item Substring comprehension
Post #812043
ShilpaSunil
Posted Sunday, November 01, 2009 3:46 AM
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Refer this link
http://www.ianywhere.com/developer/product_manuals/sqlanywhere/0902/en/html/dbrfen9/00000293.htm
Post #812090
davoscollective
Posted Monday, November 02, 2009 12:31 AM


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Took a guess and got it wrong, but...
Ran this on 2005 and A is not actually NULL, its an empty string. Maybe its NULL on 2008?
Post #812209
vk-kirov
Posted Monday, November 02, 2009 1:07 AM
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The correct answer is: A is '' (empty string), B is 'Chris'.
Try this code:
declare @name varchar(12)
select @name = 'Christopher'
select case when substring(@name,15,12) is null then 'NULL' else 'NOT NULL' end as A, substring(@name,-6,12) as B

and you will see the result:
A        B
-------- ------------
NOT NULL Chris

(1 row(s) affected)

Despite what is shown in 2008 BOL

Maybe the author of the question uses some "secret special" BOL
I use the following link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187748.aspx, and what I see there:
SUBSTRING ( value_expression ,start_expression , length_expression )
...
If length_expression is negative, an error is generated and the statement is terminated.

So, length_expression cannot be negative, but the "-6" from the question is start_expression.

the code ... does not return the whole value expression when the sum of the start and length values are greater than the length of the variable

Just a little detail from BOL:
the whole value expression beginning at start_expression is returned
Post #812213
honza.mf
Posted Monday, November 02, 2009 5:14 AM


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Just a little mistake, empty string and null.
But to tell the truth, I was confused, because I know the first expression returns empty string and not a null...


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Post #812313
Toby White
Posted Monday, November 02, 2009 7:15 AM
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Even though A is empty string versus Null the answer is still obvious given that it is multiple choice. In other words it was obvious that the author had just made a mistake between empty/null since options A and C were so far off.
Post #812361
BudaCli
Posted Tuesday, November 03, 2009 12:30 AM
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I chose the one closest to the answer and I seem to have got it right. Hihahhhhh

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Post #812769
premkuttan
Posted Tuesday, November 03, 2009 7:09 AM
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Can some one explains how it returns 'chris' when the start value is -6 and length is 12.
Post #812904
VM-723206
Posted Tuesday, November 03, 2009 8:04 AM
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sorry, wrong post..
Post #812941
mark.ross
Posted Tuesday, November 03, 2009 10:00 AM
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If you think of it sort of as a number line, the name "Christopher" would occupy spots 1 thru 11 of the line. The expression is askiing you to look at spots -6 thru 5. This is 12 spots because of the number zero. The first 7 spots (-6 thru 0) we're asked to look at don't correspond to any characters in the name and don't return any characters. But the last 5 spots correspond to spots 1 thru 5 of the number line and those spots are occupied by the characters "Chris".

This is perhaps a clumsy example, but it seems to work.
Post #813058
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