Comments on: SQL SERVER – Find First Non-Numeric Character from String

By: rahul sahay

rahul sahay — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 18:21:44 +0000

Dear Pinal,

Can you please confirm wether there is any other method of achieving the result:

/* First occurrence of character in a string using table variable */
/* table variable created*/
declare @table1 table(id integer identity(1,1),name varchar(5))
insert into @table1 values (’911av’),(’1sdf’),(‘aaaa’)

/* displaying content of table*/
select * from @table1

/* count the total number of records in the table */
declare @rcount integer
select @rcount = COUNT(name) from @table1

/* declare variable for outer loop */
declare @i_rcount integer
set @i_rcount = 1

/* loop that will run for each record */
declare @srecord varchar(10)
declare @result1 varchar(10)
declare @x integer
while(@i_rcount <=@rcount)
begin
/* store the individual records here */
select @srecord = name from @table1 where id = @i_rcount
select @result1 = LEN(name) from @table1
set @x = 1
/* checking each character in the record */
while(@x <=@result1)
begin
if(ISNUMERIC(left(@srecord,@x))) 1
begin
select ‘First Occurence of character’ +’ ‘+ ‘in string:’+’ ‘+’ ‘+ @srecord +’ ‘+’is’+’ ‘+ cast(@x as varchar(3))
set @x = @result1+1 /* this will exit from the inner loop */
end
else
set @x = @x+1
end
set @i_rcount = @i_rcount+1
end

By: SQL SERVER – Order By Numeric Values Formatted as String « SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 01:31:58 +0000

[...] blog post so I did my best to come up with one. Here is the reason why? I wrote a blog post earlier SQL SERVER – Find First Non-Numeric Character from String. One of the questions was that how that blog can be useful in real life scenario. This blog post is [...]

By: Eric Bradford

Eric Bradford — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 20:05:47 +0000

Charindex seems to do this a bit faster :

SELECT CHARINDEX ( ‘%[^0-9]%’,Col1 ) ‘Position of NonNumeric Character’,
SUBSTRING(Col1,CHARINDEX ( ‘%[^0-9]%’,Col1 ),1) ‘NonNumeric Character’,
Col1 ‘Original Character’
FROM MyTable t1

I tried it on a larger recordset:

SET STATISTICS TIME ON

SELECT PATINDEX(‘%[^0-9]%’,t1.name) ‘Position of NonNumeric Character’,
SUBSTRING(t1.name,PATINDEX(‘%[^0-9]%’,t1.name),1) ‘NonNumeric Character’,
t1.name ‘Original Character’
FROM sys.all_columns t1
ORDER BY object_id

SELECT CHARINDEX ( ‘%[^0-9]%’,t1.NAME ) ‘Position of NonNumeric Character’,
SUBSTRING(t1.name,CHARINDEX ( ‘%[^0-9]%’,t1.NAME ),1) ‘NonNumeric Character’,
t1.name ‘Original Character’
FROM sys.all_columns t1
ORDER BY object_id

By: Sanjay Monpara

Sanjay Monpara — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 10:00:23 +0000

Harsh, You are right

By: Rahul Bhatti

Rahul Bhatti — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 07:09:24 +0000

Dear Mr. Pinal,

I have problem of using PIVOT in query. IT gives error message to set database compatibility.

Waiting for your reply.

By: Harsh

Harsh — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 05:13:50 +0000

These first 2 solutions of %[a-z] & %[a-z,A-Z]% will work in given example.
But, it will not work in case of any special character is there, because it is returning first alphabet character of string

By: nirav

nirav — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 04:54:02 +0000

SELECT PATINDEX(‘%[a-z,A-Z]%’,Col1) ‘Position of NonNumeric Character’,
PATINDEX(‘%[^0-9]%’,Col1) ‘Position of NonNumeric Character’,
SUBSTRING(Col1,PATINDEX(‘%[^0-9]%’,Col1),1) ‘NonNumeric Character’,
Col1 ‘Original Character’
FROM MyTable

By: Muhammad Imran

Muhammad Imran — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 04:35:20 +0000

One more option is :

SELECT PATINDEX(‘%[a-z]%’,Col1) ‘Position of NonNumeric Character’,
SUBSTRING(Col1,PATINDEX(‘%[a-z]%’,Col1),1) ‘NonNumeric Character’,
Col1 ‘Original Character’
FROM MyTable