Question

I have some entries that are inconstant, they should be prepended by the same string.

some have numbers and other have the dollar sign and the number

so I have a syntax that finds all the entries which do not have the dollar sign

WHERE [mydata] not like '$%'

how do I add the string before each entry?

Answer 1

update table set mydata = '$' + mydata where [mydata] not like '$%'

The + only works in SQLServer; you may need to use the concatenate function otherwise.