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Asked: 2026-05-11T10:58:50+00:00

I’ve been using this for some time: SUBSTRING(str_col, PATINDEX(‘%[^0]%’, str_col), LEN(str_col)) However recently, I’ve

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I’ve been using this for some time:

SUBSTRING(str_col, PATINDEX('%[^0]%', str_col), LEN(str_col))

However recently, I’ve found a problem with columns with all ‘0’ characters like ‘00000000’ because it never finds a non-‘0’ character to match.

An alternative technique I’ve seen is to use TRIM:

REPLACE(LTRIM(REPLACE(str_col, '0', ' ')), ' ', '0')

This has a problem if there are embedded spaces, because they will be turned into ‘0’s when the spaces are turned back into ‘0’s.

I’m trying to avoid a scalar UDF. I’ve found a lot of performance problems with UDFs in SQL Server 2005.

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1 Answer

  1. SUBSTRING(str_col, PATINDEX('%[^0]%', str_col+'.'), LEN(str_col))
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