Question

I have a column that has values stored in the following format:

name#URL

All data is stored with this and a second # is never present.

I’ve got the following statement that strips the URL from this column:

SELECT  SUBSTRING ( wf_name ,PATINDEX ( '%#%' , wf_name )+1 , LEN(wf_name)-(PATINDEX ( '%#%' , wf_name )) )

However I want to take the name also (everything left of the #). Unfortuantely I don’t understand the functions I’m using above (having read the documentation I’m still confused). Could somebody please help me to understand the flow and how I can adjust this to get everything left of #?

Answer 1

Have a look at the following example

; WITH Table1 AS (
    SELECT  'TADA#TEST' AS NameURL
)
SELECT  *,
        LEFT(NameURL,PATINDEX('%#%',NameURL) - 1) LeftText,
        RIGHT(NameURL,PATINDEX('%#%',NameURL)- 1) RightText
FROM    Table1

SQL Fiddle DEMO

Using functions

PATINDEX (Transact-SQL)

Returns the starting position of the first occurrence of a pattern in
a specified expression, or zeros if the pattern is not found, on all
valid text and character data types.

LEFT (Transact-SQL)

Returns the left part of a character string with the specified number
of characters.

RIGHT (Transact-SQL)

Returns the right part of a character string with the specified number
of characters.