Splitting City and State with variable formats

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Splitting City and State with variable formats

Thomas Stringer

SSCarpal Tunnel

Points: 4038
More actions
August 4, 2011 at 1:08 pm

#245766

I have a difficult task here. Say there's a column in a table called CityState. The column can have values such as:
Las Angeles, CA
Anaheim, C.A.
San Diego CA
Seattle W.A.
I can't just do a simple substrings on this, because the state could potentially be 4 characters on the right. And I would want it so that it is always just the two character state (if it is C.A. it should be CA). And with a potential comma, the city name isn't as simple either.
If I wanted to select the city name (without the comma) and the state name (without the period) to insert into another table, what would be the best approach here?
Thanks in advance. 🙂

Twitter: @SQLife
Email: sqlsalt(at)outlook(dot)com

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Lowell SSC Guru Points: 323518 More actions · Answer 1

i think if you REVERSE the string, and grab up to a space, that might be pretty close to what you are after:

you can always REPLACE() to remove any commas in the city, and REPLACE() to remove periods in the state

SELECT

CityState,

REVERSE(CityState),

CHARINDEX(' ',REVERSE(CityState)),

SUBSTRING(REVERSE(CityState),1,CHARINDEX(' ',REVERSE(CityState))),

SUBSTRING(REVERSE(CityState),CHARINDEX(' ',REVERSE(CityState))+ 1,30),

REVERSE(SUBSTRING(REVERSE(CityState),1,CHARINDEX(' ',REVERSE(CityState)))),

REVERSE(SUBSTRING(REVERSE(CityState),CHARINDEX(' ',REVERSE(CityState))+ 1,30))

FROM

(SELECT 'Las Angeles, CA' As CityState UNION ALL

SELECT 'Anaheim, C.A.' UNION ALL

SELECT 'San Diego CA' UNION ALL

SELECT 'Seattle W.A.'

)X

Lowell

--help us help you! If you post a question, make sure you include a CREATE TABLE... statement and INSERT INTO... statement into that table to give the volunteers here representative data. with your description of the problem, we can provide a tested, verifiable solution to your question! asking the question the right way gets you a tested answer the fastest way possible!

The Dixie Flatline SSC Guru Points: 53354 More actions · Answer 2

I took Lowell's code and tossed in a couple of bells and whistles. Like standardizing the commas.

-- Dude, periods in state abbreviations... seriously?

SELECT CityState,City+', '+st as fixed,city,st

FROM

(SELECT *,

ltrim(rtrim(reverse(left(revcity,(CHARINDEX(' ',revcity,1)))))) as st,

LTRIM(rtrim(reverse(right(revcity,len(revcity)-(CHARINDEX(' ',revcity,1)))))) as city

FROM

(SELECT

CityState

,ltrim(rtrim(reverse(REPLACE(REPLACE(citystate,'.',space(0)),',',SPACE(1))))) as revcity

FROM

(SELECT 'Las Angeles, CA' As CityState UNION ALL

SELECT 'Anaheim, C.A.' UNION ALL

SELECT 'San Diego CA' UNION ALL

SELECT 'Seattle WASH.'

) X

) Y

) Z

__________________________________________________

Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. -- Friedrich Schiller
Stop, children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down. -- Stephen Stills

Thomas Stringer SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4038 More actions · Answer 3

So it ended up being even worse than originally thought of. The data was even messier than that. In some entries, the zip code was appended to the CityState column. (got to love user input :rolleyes:)

So I ended up having to do a REPLACE() on all numeric characters with an empty character. And there was tons of spaces all over, so I had to trim when I went to split them up.

If anybody is interested in seeing the final resulting query then I will gladly post. Talk about a few hours of frustration...

Twitter: @SQLife
Email: sqlsalt(at)outlook(dot)com

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004403 More actions · Answer 4

trstringer (8/4/2011)
So it ended up being even worse than originally thought of. The data was even messier than that. In some entries, the zip code was appended to the CityState column. (got to love user input :rolleyes:)
So I ended up having to do a REPLACE() on all numeric characters with an empty character. And there was tons of spaces all over, so I had to trim when I went to split them up.
If anybody is interested in seeing the final resulting query then I will gladly post. Talk about a few hours of frustration...

Absolutely... post the code. I'd also be interested to see 10 or 20 of the really wierd entries you had to put up with so I can take a crack at simplifying the code for you.

--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.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004403 More actions · Answer 5

Here's my take on it. I don't know for sure if I have all the bases covered but I've avoided the very expense REVERSE function altogether thanks to my buddies ISNULL, NULLIF, and RTRIM.

Here's the test table I set up...

--===== Create and populate a test table on-the-fly

-- This is NOT a part of the solution.

SELECT d.MixedName

INTO #CityState

FROM (

SELECT 'Las Angeles, CA' As CityState UNION ALL

SELECT 'Anaheim, C.A.' UNION ALL

SELECT 'San Diego CA' UNION ALL

SELECT 'Seattle W.A.' UNION ALL

SELECT 'Auburn Hills , M.I., 48325-1234 ' UNION ALL

SELECT 'Some Really Long City Name , C.A 90210 '

) d (MixedName)

;

Here's a possible solution...

--===== Solve the problem without any REVERSE's

WITH

cteFirstPass AS

(

SELECT CityState =

RTRIM(

REPLACE(

SUBSTRING(

MixedName

,1,ISNULL(NULLIF(PATINDEX('%[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]%',MixedName)-1,-1),8000))

,',','')

,'.','')

),

Zip =

RTRIM(

SUBSTRING(

MixedName

,ISNULL(NULLIF(PATINDEX('%[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]%',MixedName),0),7000),10)

)

FROM #CityState

)

SELECT City = RTRIM(SUBSTRING(CityState,1, LEN(CityState)-2)),

State = RIGHT(CityState,2),

Zip

FROM cteFirstPass

;

Now... the premise of the code above is that the last two letters in the text will always be a State abbreviation whether they're separated by periods, spaces, or something else. The comma means nothing in the code above.

It also assumes that Zip codes will consist of at least 5 contiguous digits to the right of the State. 😀

--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.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Thomas Stringer SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4038 More actions · Answer 6

First off, here's some data that I saw:

Anaheim CA

Los Angeles, C.A.

San Diego,C.A. (notice the lack of space between the comma and the state abbr)

Tampa Bay, F L 33703 (notice the zip code)

Miami F.L. 331 (yes, that's not a typo. It is a partial zip code)

There are no typos there, sometimes there were zero spaces, sometimes there were excess spaces. Sometimes there was 5-digit zips, sometimes there was partial zips. Unbelievable. 🙂 Anyways, this is what I came up with. I'm sure it's not the most efficient piece of code but it seems to get the job done on 20,000+ records rather fast.

select mailingcitystate

into #MailingCityStateTemp1

from OriginalData