Question

I have table in DB2

id     HOURS     HOURSMINUTESECECONDS
1000   450.5     30:30:30

Hours is float value and HOURSMINUTESSECONDS is string value

I subtract them by using this function:

    (HOURS - 
(CAST(substr(HOURSMINUTESSECONDS , 1, 2) AS float) +
 CAST(substr(HOURSMINUTESECONDS , 4, 2) AS float)/60 + 
CAST(substr(HOURSMINUTESECONDS , 7, 2) AS float)/3600)) as diff

But if my row in HOURSMINUTESECONDS has value on example 300:30:30 or 3000:30:30 etc this won’t work (ERROR) because substring will take only first elements.

So how this can be solved (SPLIT?) ? To take full value between “:” no meter how many charatcters?
Thank you

Answer 1

• use LOCATE (that tells you index of an occurence of a substring in a string)
• or, reference the colons relative to the end of your string:

(HOURS -
(CAST(substr(HOURSMINUTESSECONDS , 1, LENGTH(HOURSMINUTESSECONDS) - 6) AS float) +
CAST(substr(HOURSMINUTESECONDS , LENGTH(HOURSMINUTESSECONDS) - 4, 2) AS float)/60 +
CAST(substr(HOURSMINUTESECONDS , LENGTH(HOURSMINUTESSECONDS) - 1, 2) AS float)/3600)) as diff