Comments on: SQL SERVER – Removing Leading Zeros From Column in Table

By: Eileena

Eileena — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 21:59:02 +0000

Hello, I am a rookie for SQL server, who can tell me why a space is added to ‘Col1′ on Pinal’s solution. I tried some samples it works even without adding space. “SUBSTRING(Col1, PATINDEX(‘%[^0 ]%’, Col1 + ‘ ‘), LEN(Col1))”

By: Samith C Valsalan

Samith C Valsalan — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 06:30:11 +0000

Select cast(replace(col1,’ ‘,’0′) as money) from Table1

By: Liz

Liz — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 01:29:30 +0000

If Col1 contains currency symbols , it will throw exception.

By: Liz

Liz — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 01:14:24 +0000

In ur case, ’00.001′ will be ‘.001′.
Sometimes it should be ’0.001′.
How about my script here?

SELECT CASE WHEN ISNUMERIC(REPLACE(Col1,’ ‘,”)) = 0 THEN Col1
ELSE CONVERT(varchar,
CASE WHEN CHARINDEX(‘.’,REPLACE(Col1,’ ‘,”)) > 0 THEN CAST(REPLACE(Col1,’ ‘,”) AS float)
ELSE CAST(REPLACE(Col1,’ ‘,”) AS int)
END)
END
FROM Table1

By: Harsh

Harsh — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 04:42:20 +0000

Yes, that will cause exception.

Updated solution:

SELECT
RIGHT(Col1, LEN(Col1+’a') -PATINDEX(‘%[^0 ]%’, Col1 + ‘a’ ))
FROM Table1

By: rainmaker

rainmaker — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 03:49:52 +0000

Hi,
If data is ‘ ‘, use right function will cause exception.
Because Len(‘ ‘) return 0

By: SQL SERVER – Removing Leading Zeros From Column in Table – Part 2 « SQL Server Journey with SQL Authority

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 01:30:39 +0000

[...] I wrote a blog post about Remvoing Leading Zeros from Column In Table. It was a great co-incident that my friend Madhivanan (no need of introduction for him) also post a [...]

By: naveen2cool

naveen2cool — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 11:36:56 +0000

Thanks for pointing out the limitations Pinal and Harsh.

By: Harsh

Harsh — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 07:44:18 +0000

And , this solution will not work when no is larger than maximum integer value (2147483647).

By: pinaldave

pinaldave — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 06:56:30 +0000

One more thing above solution will not handle space as well decimal points.

By: pinaldave

pinaldave — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 06:48:41 +0000

Harsh – great one buddy!

By: pinaldave

pinaldave — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 06:44:06 +0000

This will indeed work but if there are alphanumeric character it will not work.

But great solution indeed – it will work in my use case which I wrote in blog post! Good Job!

By: iamAkashSingh

iamAkashSingh — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 14:42:22 +0000

Hi,

i have an alternate solution.

Replace(Ltrim(Replace(col1,’0′,’ ‘)),’ ‘,’0′)

Thanks and Regards,
Akash K Singh

By: naveen2cool

naveen2cool — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 06:31:48 +0000

I got a similar question when I went for an interview but the question was to remove both the leading and trailing zeros in a string column with numeric charecters. The solution I gave is this

select reverse(convert(int,reverse(convert(int,col1)))) from table1

Please let me know if there is a better solution

By: naveen2coolNaveen

naveen2coolNaveen — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 06:27:14 +0000

wonderful. I recently attended an interview for data analyst position and got the same question. It was interesting. But the question was to remove both the leading and trailing zeros from a string column having only numeric charecters.

The answer I gave was

select reverse(convert(int,reverse(convert(int,col1)))) from table1

The idea is converting a column to int will remove the leading zeros.

Pinal Sir, please let me know if there can be a beter solution :)

By: madhivanan

madhivanan — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 06:09:18 +0000

It means that Find the first position a character in a string which is not 0

By: madhivanan

madhivanan — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 06:08:35 +0000

By: Ritta Singh

Ritta Singh — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:58:18 +0000

^0 means Pattern not like 0
Basically get the first Non 0 or Non Space character(If you see carefully there is a space after 0 in the pattern), take its index position in the string and then using substring, retrieve anything after that.

By: lucazav

lucazav — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:37:09 +0000

This is another way to do that:

SELECT
T.Col1
, label = CAST(
CAST(REPLACE(T.Col1, ‘ ‘, ”) AS FLOAT)
AS VARCHAR(10))
FROM Table1 AS T

Regards

By: kumar

kumar — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 09:30:59 +0000

what does ^0 mean in t- sql

By: Harsh

Harsh — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 05:08:41 +0000

As mentioned by ‘rainmaker’, For Zeros ’000′, it is not giving proper result.
For this, my suggested solution is:

SELECT
SUBSTRING(Col1, PATINDEX(‘%[^0 ]%’, Col1 + ‘a’), LEN(Col1))
FROM Table1

And for alternate solution , I have used RIGHT function,

SELECT
RIGHT(Col1, LEN(Col1)+1 -PATINDEX(‘%[^0 ]%’, Col1 + ‘a’ ))
FROM Table1

By: rainmaker

rainmaker — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 02:15:46 +0000

Hi,
Should we check the value ’000′? PATINDEX will return zero.

SELECT
CASE PATINDEX(‘%[^0 ]%’, Col1 + ‘ ‘)
WHEN 0 THEN ”
ELSE SUBSTRING(Col1, PATINDEX(‘%[^0 ]%’, Col1 + ‘ ‘), LEN(Col1))
END
FROM Table1