In t-sql, is there a way to do pattern matching in a like statement such that you can search for 1 or more characters in a given set?
To be specific, I'm trying to come up with a LIKE statement that will return strings that begin with 1 or more letters and end in 1 or more numbers.
So these strings should match:
- abcd1234
- a1
- abcdef2
- ab123456
And these strings should not match:
- abcd
- 1234
- abcd1234abcd
- 1abcd1
I know you can use the % wildcard to match a string of 0 or more characters, and you can use brackets[] to match a single character in a given set. But is there any way to combine those so that I can match on 1 or more characters in a given set?
Something like this would be nice, but of course doesn't work:
WHERE ColumnName LIKE '[%a-z][%0-9]'
Does anyone know of a solution to this problem? Or is it just not possible in SQL Server?
Thanks, Jim