jarid.lawson (10/8/2012)
ScottPletcher (10/8/2012)
SELECT lastname
FROM HR.Employees
WHERE
lastname LIKE '%[/]%' AND
lastname NOT LIKE '%[/]%[/]%'
Still have to add the line that removes / in the first character. I also believe you would want to remove any where / was the last character...
And Left(Ltrim(LastName), 1) <> '/'And Right(Rtrim(LastName),1) <> '/'
I'm curious if this would not be a good option from an execution plan perspective? Are there better / faster ways of completing this?
Oops, I didn't initially read down far enough to see the new requirement of not a leading /:
SELECT lastname
FROM HR.Employees
WHERE
lastname LIKE '[^/]%[/]%' AND
lastname NOT LIKE '[^/]%[/]%[/]%'
[/quote]
In theory this could potentially be faster with a covering index on lastname (probably likely, if you plan on running this query very often), whereas the queries using REPLACE(...) or any other function on the lastname column would require a full table scan.
That is, "lastname [NOT] like" is SARGable but "<function>(... lastname ...)" is not.
SQL DBA,SQL Server MVP(07, 08, 09) A socialist is someone who will give you the shirt off *someone else's* back.