Using SQL I'd like to return all text before the 3rd forward slash in a column
so
/one/two/three/whatever/testing
would return:
/one/two/three
Any quick and dirty way to do this in SQL (specifically MS T-SQL under MS SQL 2005+) ?
Using SQL I'd like to return all text before the 3rd forward slash in a column
so
/one/two/three/whatever/testing
would return:
/one/two/three
Any quick and dirty way to do this in SQL (specifically MS T-SQL under MS SQL 2005+) ?
Since you said "quick and dirty", I'm assuming that this very quick and very dirty solution won't receive a bunch of down votes. The SQL below uses multiple SUBSTRING()
functions to find the third slash:
DECLARE @str VARCHAR(50)
SET @str = '/one/two/three/whatever/testing'
SELECT SUBSTRING(@str, 0, CHARINDEX('/', @str, CHARINDEX('/', @str, CHARINDEX('/', @str, CHARINDEX('/', @str, 0) + 1) + 1) + 1))
You can see a working example here.
Try adding the function
/*
Example:
SELECT dbo.CHARINDEX2('a', 'abbabba', 3)
returns the location of the third occurrence of 'a'
which is 7
*/
CREATE FUNCTION CHARINDEX2
(
@TargetStr varchar(8000),
@SearchedStr varchar(8000),
@Occurrence int
)
RETURNS int
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @pos INT, @counter INT, @ret INT
set @pos = CHARINDEX(@TargetStr, @SearchedStr)
set @counter = 1
if @Occurrence = 1 set @ret = @pos
else
begin
while (@counter < @Occurrence)
begin
select @ret = CHARINDEX(@TargetStr, @SearchedStr, @pos + 1)
set @counter = @counter + 1
set @pos = @ret
end
end
RETURN(@ret)
end
Then reference the function as such...
SELECT SUBSTRING('/one/two/three/whatever/testing', 0, dbo.CHARINDEX2('/', '/one/two/three/whatever/testing', 3))
Check out an article here for a better look :)
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.CharIndex2 (@expressionToFind VARCHAR(MAX), @expressionToSearch VARCHAR(MAX), @instance INT)
RETURNS INT
BEGIN
DECLARE @Position INT
DECLARE @i INT = 1
WHILE @i <= @instance
BEGIN
SET @Position = CHARINDEX(@expressionToFind,@expressionToSearch,COALESCE(@Position+1,1))
SET @i += 1
END
RETURN @Position
END
GO