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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-22T03:21:44+00:00

I have a varchar field in a SQL Server database that stores phone numbers

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I have a varchar field in a SQL Server database that stores phone numbers in many different ways, but they are all phone number essentially.

Examples: 

8181234564
(818) 123 4564
818 - 123 - 4567

I was hoping I can use regex to strip out all non-numeric characters and then perform a like or “=” on .. can I do that?

forgot to mention: I only have read access.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you know that the field contains a phone number in some kind of valid form, then the following really ugly usage of LIKE would match a specific number. To find 818-123-4567:

    select * from thetable where phonenum like ('%8%1%8%1%2%3%4%5%6%7%')

    This, of course, would match invalid entries as well (e.g., numbers that had extra digits, characters, etc.). And it would likely be a fairly expensive query unable to use any indexes.

    A more realistic version might be this:

    select * from thetable where phonenum like ('%818%123%4567%')
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