Question

I have a database in which suppose i have a table named Score in Score there are two fields

1. Id
2. Name

now when i see that there are many names starting with - for example

-Karl-KSJ
-Jhon-Kate
-Xyz-Abc

now i want to remove leading - from all rows and update them , and leave all rows where name is not starting with - . How can i achieve that in sql . Please mind it that i have millions of records so performance will play a major role .

Thanks,

Answer 1

Try it like this, it’s simple, it might be fast enough:

BEGIN TRAN

UPDATE  Score 
SET     Name = RIGHT(Name, LEN(Name) - 1)
WHERE   LEFT(Name, 1) = '-'

ROLLBACK

Here is an SQL Fiddle