Better techniques for trimming leading zeros in SQ

Question

I've been using this for some time:

SUBSTRING(str_col, PATINDEX('%[^0]%', str_col), LEN(str_col))

However recently, I've found a problem with columns with all "0" characters like '00000000' because it never finds a non-"0" character to match.

An alternative technique I've seen is to use TRIM:

REPLACE(LTRIM(REPLACE(str_col, '0', ' ')), ' ', '0')

This has a problem if there are embedded spaces, because they will be turned into "0"s when the spaces are turned back into "0"s.

I'm trying to avoid a scalar UDF. I've found a lot of performance problems with UDFs in SQL Server 2005.

Answer 1

Why don't you just cast the value to INTEGER and then back to VARCHAR?

SELECT  CAST(CAST('000000000' AS INTEGER) AS VARCHAR)

--------
       0

Answer 2

Other answers here to not take into consideration if you have all-zero's (or even a single zero).
Some always default an empty string to zero, which is wrong when it is supposed to remain blank.
Re-read the original question. This answers what the Questioner wants.

Solution #1:

--This example uses both Leading and Trailing zero's.
--Avoid losing those Trailing zero's and converting embedded spaces into more zeros.
--I added a non-whitespace character ("_") to retain trailing zero's after calling Replace().
--Simply remove the RTrim() function call if you want to preserve trailing spaces.
--If you treat zero's and empty-strings as the same thing for your application,
--  then you may skip the Case-Statement entirely and just use CN.CleanNumber .
DECLARE @WackadooNumber VarChar(50) = ' 0 0123ABC D0 '--'000'--
SELECT WN.WackadooNumber, CN.CleanNumber,
       (CASE WHEN WN.WackadooNumber LIKE '%0%' AND CN.CleanNumber = '' THEN '0' ELSE CN.CleanNumber END)[AllowZero]
 FROM (SELECT @WackadooNumber[WackadooNumber]) AS WN
 OUTER APPLY (SELECT RTRIM(RIGHT(WN.WackadooNumber, LEN(LTRIM(REPLACE(WN.WackadooNumber + '_', '0', ' '))) - 1))[CleanNumber]) AS CN
--Result: "123ABC D0"

Solution #2 (with sample data):

SELECT O.Type, O.Value, Parsed.Value[WrongValue],
       (CASE WHEN CHARINDEX('0', T.Value)  > 0--If there's at least one zero.
              AND LEN(Parsed.Value) = 0--And the trimmed length is zero.
             THEN '0' ELSE Parsed.Value END)[FinalValue],
       (CASE WHEN CHARINDEX('0', T.Value)  > 0--If there's at least one zero.
              AND LEN(Parsed.TrimmedValue) = 0--And the trimmed length is zero.
             THEN '0' ELSE LTRIM(RTRIM(Parsed.TrimmedValue)) END)[FinalTrimmedValue]
  FROM 
  (
    VALUES ('Null', NULL), ('EmptyString', ''),
           ('Zero', '0'), ('Zero', '0000'), ('Zero', '000.000'),
           ('Spaces', '    0   A B C '), ('Number', '000123'),
           ('AlphaNum', '000ABC123'), ('NoZero', 'NoZerosHere')
  ) AS O(Type, Value)--O is for Original.
  CROSS APPLY
  ( --This Step is Optional.  Use if you also want to remove leading spaces.
    SELECT LTRIM(RTRIM(O.Value))[Value]
  ) AS T--T is for Trimmed.
  CROSS APPLY
  ( --From @CadeRoux's Post.
    SELECT SUBSTRING(O.Value, PATINDEX('%[^0]%', O.Value + '.'), LEN(O.Value))[Value],
           SUBSTRING(T.Value, PATINDEX('%[^0]%', T.Value + '.'), LEN(T.Value))[TrimmedValue]
  ) AS Parsed

Results:

Summary:

You could use what I have above for a one-off removal of leading-zero's.
If you plan on reusing it a lot, then place it in an Inline-Table-Valued-Function (ITVF).
Your concerns about performance problems with UDF's is understandable.
However, this problem only applies to All-Scalar-Functions and Multi-Statement-Table-Functions.
Using ITVF's is perfectly fine.

I have the same problem with our 3rd-Party database.
With Alpha-Numeric fields many are entered in without the leading spaces, dang humans!
This makes joins impossible without cleaning up the missing leading-zeros.

Conclusion:

Instead of removing the leading-zeros, you may want to consider just padding your trimmed-values with leading-zeros when you do your joins.
Better yet, clean up your data in the table by adding leading zeros, then rebuilding your indexes.
I think this would be WAY faster and less complex.

SELECT RIGHT('0000000000' + LTRIM(RTRIM(NULLIF(' 0A10  ', ''))), 10)--0000000A10
SELECT RIGHT('0000000000' + LTRIM(RTRIM(NULLIF('', ''))), 10)--NULL --When Blank.

Answer 3

If you do not want to convert into int, I prefer this below logic because it can handle nulls IFNULL(field,LTRIM(field,'0'))

Answer 4

If you are using Snowflake SQL, might use this:

ltrim(str_col,'0')

The ltrim function removes all instances of the designated set of characters from the left side.

So ltrim(str_col,'0') on '00000008A' would return '8A'

And rtrim(str_col,'0.') on '$125.00' would return '$125'

Answer 5

Instead of a space replace the 0's with a 'rare' whitespace character that shouldn't normally be in the column's text. A line feed is probably good enough for a column like this. Then you can LTrim normally and replace the special character with 0's again.

Answer 6

The following will return '0' if the string consists entirely of zeros:

CASE WHEN SUBSTRING(str_col, PATINDEX('%[^0]%', str_col+'.'), LEN(str_col)) = '' THEN '0' ELSE SUBSTRING(str_col, PATINDEX('%[^0]%', str_col+'.'), LEN(str_col)) END AS str_col