String Manipulation

Question

String Manipulation

AndrewSQLDBA

SSC-Insane

Points: 21827
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August 1, 2013 at 2:44 pm

#275843

Hello Everyone
I have a strange thing that I am trying to code for, and I am almost there, but I know there is a function.
I have a string of text that I need to select, which is only the first word. The rest I do not care about. There is a blank space between the two words, there are only two words and I will only need the first word.
Sample:
Irvine Street
I need only the word "Irvine"
I cannot, for the life of me think of the function name. I have tried substring, but that is not doing what I need.
Thank you in advance for your comments, suggestions and assistance
Andrew SQLDBA

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Luis Cazares SSC Guru Points: 183706 More actions · Answer 1

Something that's not LEFT( myString, CHARINDEX(' ', myString)) ?

Luis C.
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Are you seriously taking the advice and code from someone from the internet without testing it? Do you at least understand it? Or can it easily kill your server?

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AndrewSQLDBA SSC-Insane Points: 21827 More actions · Answer 2

Thank You Luis

That is perfect and exactly what I needed, and was trying to do.

I need to brush up on my string manipulations

Thanks again

Andrew SQLDBA

ScottPletcher SSC Guru Points: 101119 More actions · Answer 3

Technically it should be:

LEFT(myString, CHARINDEX(' ', myString + ' ') - 1)

unless you want a trailing space in the result :-).

Adding the "+ ' '" will cause the code to return the complete string if a space is not found.

SQL DBA,SQL Server MVP(07, 08, 09) "It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear." "Norm", on "Cheers". Also from "Cheers", from "Carla": "You need to know 3 things about Tortelli men: Tortelli men draw women like flies; Tortelli men treat women like flies; Tortelli men's brains are in their flies".

Alan Burstein SSC Guru Points: 61141 More actions · Answer 4

I put together a little sample code and a few examples (note my comments) for a couple common scenarios

DECLARE @x TABLE (val varchar(20));

INSERT @x VALUES ('two words'),('two words '),('oneword'),(' leading space');

--This will also work (using substring):

SELECTval AS original,

SUBSTRING(val,1,CHARINDEX(' ',val)) AS updated

FROM @x;

--To handle cases where there are no spaces:

SELECTval AS original,

CASE

WHEN CHARINDEX(' ',val)=0 THEN val

ELSE LEFT(val,CHARINDEX(' ',val))

END AS updated

FROM @x;

--To handle cases where there are leading spaces:

SELECTval AS original,

CASE

WHEN CHARINDEX(' ',val)=0 THEN val

ELSE LEFT(LTRIM(val),CHARINDEX(' ',LTRIM(val)))

END AS updated

FROM @x;

"I cant stress enough the importance of switching from a sequential files mindset to set-based thinking. After you make the switch, you can spend your time tuning and optimizing your queries instead of maintaining lengthy, poor-performing code."

-- Itzik Ben-Gan 2001