Covert a string to simple sql datetime format

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Covert a string to simple sql datetime format

Jeff Sims-413169

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June 5, 2020 at 9:36 pm

#3760979

Can anyone help me out here. I need to convert strings in a file I received to datetime. An example format is: Wed Jun 29 15:57:45 2019

June 10, 2020 at 9:41 am

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frederico_fonseca SSCoach Points: 16154 More actions · Answer 1

if format is always the same you will need to use a bit of substrings and concatenation

extract following blocks

year
month
day
time

then concatenate year-month-day time with between day and time (and "-" on the others)

then use convert to datetime with format 120 (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/functions/cast-and-convert-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver15#date-and-time-styles)

Jonathan AC Roberts SSCoach Points: 18354 More actions · Answer 2

DECLARE @DateString nvarchar(100)='Wed Jun 29 15:57:45 2019'
SELECT CONVERT(datetime,SUBSTRING(@DateString,5,100))

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004339 More actions · Answer 3

Jonathan AC Roberts wrote:

DECLARE @DateString nvarchar(100)='Wed Jun 29 15:57:45 2019'
SELECT CONVERT(datetime,SUBSTRING(@DateString,5,100))

I've always been astounded by the implicit conversions of strings to DateTime that SQL Server handles correctly. It seriously outstrips the formatting available through CONVERT and people seem to thing that's all it can handle for string conversions.

I have to admit that I've not seen this format before but, like you, I would have tried it anyway and would have, once again, been astounded by its implicit conversion capabilities.

Nicely done, Jonathan.

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

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