Question

select c.* 
from syscolumns c join sysobjects o on o.id=c.id and o.name = 'orders'

returns

Id
Customer
Product
03-28-2011
04-04-2011
04-11-2011
04-18-2011

This is correct. But I want only the columns that match the pattern 99-99-9999. So I tried this where cast(o.name as varchar) like '%-%-%' which didn’t return any results. Then I tried this: where cast(o.name as varchar) like 'P%' (I expected to get “Product”) and it also did not return anything. Why??? What syntax should I use to get the columns that are “dates” ?

Thanks!

Answer 1

For each part of your question…

Date pattern matching

You can use [0-9] to specify ranges.

So for 99-99-9999 you’d have

LIKE '[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]'

For dates, you can use ISDATE too or things like this to restrict further

LIKE '[0-1][0-9]-[0-3][0-9]-2[0-9][0-9][0-9]'

Column filters

These conditions can never all be true because they are all on o.name

o.name = 'orders'

and

cast(o.name as varchar) like '%-%-%'
cast(o.name as varchar) like 'P%'

The latter 2 should be on c.name in your query

Finally

Use the newer sys.columns and sys.objects. Or INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS which is probably best here