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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-16T15:31:43+00:00

I have the following SQL query: SELECT DISTINCT ProductNumber, PageNumber FROM table I am

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I have the following SQL query:

SELECT DISTINCT ProductNumber, PageNumber FROM table

I am trying to modify the query so that PageNumber will be formatted. You see, PageNumber is in any of the following formats, where ‘x’ is a digit:

  • xxx, xxx
  • xxx
  • xxx-xxx
  • xx, xxx-xxx
  • xx-xx, xxx
  • xx-xx, xxx-xxx

I want to format PageNumber so that it is only in the format: xxx. To do so, I have parse out the following bolded numbers from the above formats:

  • xxx, xxx
  • xxx
  • xxx-xxx
  • xx, xxx-xxx
  • xx-xx, xxx
  • xx-xx, xxx-xxx

I want to do this all without writing any functions, but I don’t know if that is possible. I am having trouble “detecting” all of the different formats, though:

Here is what I have so far:

SELECT  ProductNumber,
        CASE WHEN CHARINDEX(',', PageNumber) > 0
             THEN SUBSTRING(PageNumber, 0, CHARINDEX('-', PageNumber))
             WHEN CHARINDEX('-', PageNumber) > 0
             THEN SUBSTRING(PageNumber, 0, CHARINDEX('-', PageNumber))
             ELSE PageNumber
        END AS PageNumber
FROM    table
WHERE   PageNumber IS NOT NULL
    AND PageNumber <> ''

Can anyone offer me some help? Thanks!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Use pattern matching rather than CHARINDEX

    CASE also forces ordering of evaluation which helps here for the 3rd case which overlaps with the first 2 cases.

    Not tested, something like

    CASE
    WHEN PageNumber LIKE '[0-9][0-9][0-9]%' THEN LEFT(PageNumber, 3)
    WHEN PageNumber LIKE '[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9], [0-9][0-9][0-9]') THEN RIGHT(PageNumber , 3)
    WHEN PageNumber LIKE '[0-9][0-9]%') THEN LEFT(PageNumber, 2)
END
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