Question

I have the following date format 92845 which represent hhmmss.

I would like to convert that to a datetime in SQL.

I could use something like this:

SELECT STUFF(STUFF('84936',3,0,'-'),6,0,'-') 

but it appears T-SQL is not liking the hour part.

thank you!

Answer 1

Seems like you wrote the code in the afternoon and now it doesn’t work in the morning. If you’re going to stuff based on absolute positioning, you need to make sure the string is always the same length. One way to do this is by padding the string with a 0 and then taking the right-most 6 characters. Also, you need : not - for H/M separators.

SELECT STUFF(STUFF(RIGHT('0' + '84936', 6),3,0,':'),6,0,':'); 

Result:

08:49:36

Now it can be converted to a datetime:

SELECT CONVERT(DATETIME, STUFF(STUFF(RIGHT('0' + '84936', 6),3,0,':'),6,0,':'));

Result:

1900-01-01 08:49:36.000