I was wondering, if there is some way to shuffle the letters of a string in mysql/sql, i.e. something like the pseudocode: SELECT SHUFFLE('abcdef')
?
Couldn't find any from http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/string-functions.html and searching for it just seems to find solutions for shuffling results, not a string.
Here you go:
DELIMITER //
DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS shuffle;
CREATE FUNCTION shuffle(
v_chars TEXT
)
RETURNS TEXT
NOT DETERMINISTIC -- multiple RAND()'s
NO SQL
SQL SECURITY INVOKER
COMMENT ''
BEGIN
DECLARE v_retval TEXT DEFAULT '';
DECLARE u_pos INT UNSIGNED;
DECLARE u INT UNSIGNED;
SET u = LENGTH(v_chars);
WHILE u > 0
DO
SET u_pos = 1 + FLOOR(RAND() * u);
SET v_retval = CONCAT(v_retval, MID(v_chars, u_pos, 1));
SET v_chars = CONCAT(LEFT(v_chars, u_pos - 1), MID(v_chars, u_pos + 1, u));
SET u = u - 1;
END WHILE;
RETURN v_retval;
END;
//
DELIMITER ;
SELECT shuffle('abcdef');
See sqlfiddle.com for the output.
Edit: this solution is for Microsoft SQL Server.
As it's not allowed to use RAND() in user defined function, we create a view to use it later in our shuffle function:
CREATE VIEW randomView
AS
SELECT RAND() randomResult
GO
The actual shuffle function is as following:
CREATE FUNCTION shuffle(@string NVARCHAR(MAX))
RETURNS NVARCHAR(MAX) AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @pos INT
DECLARE @char CHAR(1)
DECLARE @shuffeld NVARCHAR(MAX)
DECLARE @random DECIMAL(18,18)
WHILE LEN(@string) > 0
BEGIN
SELECT @random = randomResult FROM randomView
SET @pos = (CONVERT(INT, @random*1000000) % LEN(@string)) + 1
SET @char = SUBSTRING(@string, @pos, 1)
SET @shuffeld = CONCAT(@shuffeld, @char)
SET @string = CONCAT(SUBSTRING(@string, 1, @pos-1), SUBSTRING(@string, @pos+1, LEN(@string)))
END
RETURN @shuffeld
END
Calling the function
DECLARE @string NVARCHAR(MAX) = 'abcdefghijklmnonpqrstuvwxyz0123456789!"§$%&/()='
SELECT dbo.shuffle(@string)
There is nothing in standard SQL - your best bet is probably to write a user defined function