Question

Possible Duplicate:
Using regular expression within a stored procedure

I need to validate a string, which should not contain contain lower case letters and Special Symbols. I have used below query, using this I’m able to find special symbols and unable to find lower case. Please suggest the best way.

DECLARE @InvNum VARCHAR(256);

SET  @InvNum='abcACB123'

IF (@InvNum LIKE '%[^A-Z0-9]%')
  BEGIN
    Print 'Enter valid Invoice #, Special characters and Lowercase Letters are not allowed'
  END
ELSE
  BEGIN
    Print 'Validation Success'
  END

Answer 1

HalfTrackMindMan almost had it right (and does for the sample data), but unfortunately, character ranges always expand out to include lowercase letters (so bcABC123 would pass his validation):

DECLARE @InvNum VARCHAR(256);

SET  @InvNum='abcACB123'

IF (@InvNum COLLATE Latin1_General_CS_AS LIKE '%[^ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0-9]%')
  BEGIN
    Print 'Enter valid Invoice #, Special characters and Lowecase Letters are not allowed'
  END
ELSE
  BEGIN
    Print 'Validation Success'
  END

([A-Z] expands out as AbBcCdDeEf...zZ)

Which collation to use is a matter of preference – either a binary collation, or one that is Case Sensitive (_CS) and Accent Sensitive (_AS) will be suitable.