SQL SERVER – Get Numeric Value From Alpha Numeric String – Get Numbers Only

I have earlier wrote article about SQL SERVER – Get Numeric Value From Alpha Numeric String – UDF for Get Numeric Numbers Only and it was very handy tool for me. Recently blog reader and SQL Expert Christofer has left excellent improvement to this logic. Here is his contribution. He has provided Stored Procedure and the same can be easily converted to Function.

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[CleanDataFromAlpha] @alpha VARCHAR(50),
@decimal DECIMAL(14, 5) OUTPUT
AS BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;
DECLARE @ErrorMsg VARCHAR(50)
DECLARE @Pos INT
DECLARE @CommaPos INT
DECLARE @ZeroExists INT
DECLARE @alphaReverse VARCHAR(50)
DECLARE @NumPos INT
DECLARE @Len INT
-- 1 Reverse the alpha in order to get the last position of a numeric value
SET @alphaReverse = REVERSE(@alpha)
-- 2 Get the last position of a numeric figure
SET @NumPos = PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', @alphaReverse)
-- 3 Get the lenght of the string
SET @Len = LEN(@alpha)
-- 4 Add a comma after the numeric data in case it's no decimal number
SET @alpha = SUBSTRING(@alpha, 1, (@Len - @NumPos + 1))
+ ','
+ SUBSTRING(@alpha, (@Len - @NumPos + 2), 50)
-- Check if there is a zero (0) in the @alpha, then we later set the @decimal to 0
-- if it's 0 after the handling, else we set @decimal to NULL
-- If 0 no match, else there is a match
SET @ZeroExists = CHARINDEX ( '0' , @alpha ,1 )
-- Find position of , (comma)
SET @CommaPos = 1
SET @CommaPos = PATINDEX('%,%', @alpha)
IF (@CommaPos = '') BEGIN
SET @CommaPos = 20
END
SET @Pos = PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%',@alpha)
-- Replaces any aplha with '0' since we otherwice can't keep track of where the decimal
-- should be put in. We assume the numeric number has no aplhe inside. The regular way
-- to solve this is to replace with ”, but then we miss the way to find the place to
-- put in the decimal.
WHILE (@Pos > 0) BEGIN
SET @alpha = STUFF(@alpha, @pos, 1, '0')
SET @Pos = PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%',@alpha)
END
IF (@alpha IS NOT NULL AND @alpha != '') BEGIN
SET @decimal = CONVERT(DECIMAL(14, 5), SUBSTRING(@alpha, 1, (@CommaPos - 1))
+ '.'
+ SUBSTRING(@alpha, (@CommaPos + 1), 20))
END
-- Since we in this case don't want to set 0 if where is no numeric value, we set NULL to be safe
IF (@decimal = 0 AND @ZeroExists = 0) BEGIN
SET @decimal = NULL
END
END
GO

If you run above SP as shown below it will work
DECLARE @myRetVal DECIMAL(14,5)
EXEC [CleanDataFromAlpha] 'ABC355,88ghf', @myRetVal OUTPUT
SELECT @myRetVal ReturnValue

ReturnValue
---------------------------------------
355.88000

(1 row(s) affected)

I once again want to thanks Christofer for his excellent contribution.

Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)