I have a table with a nvarchar column. This column has values for example:
and so on.
I would like to take MAX of this values, but not as text but like from numerics. So in this example numerics are:
And the MAX value is the last one - 3546. How to do this in TSQL on Microsoft SQL?
First install a regular expression function. This article has code you can cut/paste.
Then with RegexReplace (from that article) you can extract digits from a string:
dbo.RegexReplace( '.*?(\d+).*', myField, '$1' )
Then convert this string to a number:
CAST( dbo.RegexReplace( '.*?(\d+).*', myField, '$1' ) AS INT )
Then use this expression inside a MAX() function in a SELECT.
You can try to keep it simple without using Regular Expression
Here is the source
create table #t ( val varchar(100) )
insert #t select 983
insert #t select 294
insert #t select 'a343'
insert #t select 'a3546f';
GO
;with ValueRange as (
select val,
[from] = patindex('%[0-9]%', val),
[to] = case patindex('%[a-z]', val)
when 0 then len(val)
else patindex('%[a-z]', val) - patindex('%[0-9]%', val)
end
from #t
)
select substring(val, [from], [to]) as val
from ValueRange VR
order by cast(substring(val, [from], [to]) as int) desc
CAST() would do the trick, probably.
SELECT MAX(CAST(yourColumn AS int)) AS maxColumns FROM yourTable
Edit. I didn't read the whole question, as it seems...
– Function to strip out non-numeric chars
ALTER FUNCTION dbo.UDF_ParseNumericChars
(
@string VARCHAR(8000)
)
RETURNS VARCHAR(8000)
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @IncorrectCharLoc SMALLINT
–SET @IncorrectCharLoc = PATINDEX(’%[^0-9A-Za-z]%’, @string)
SET @IncorrectCharLoc = PATINDEX(’%[^0-9.]%’, @string)
WHILE @IncorrectCharLoc > 0
BEGIN
SET @string = STUFF(@string, @IncorrectCharLoc, 1, ”)
SET @IncorrectCharLoc = PATINDEX(’%[^0-9.]%’, @string)
END
SET @string = @string
RETURN @string
END
GO
I picked it from here. (I voted up the reg exp answer though)
you can write a function something like
create FUNCTION [dbo].[getFirstNumeric](
@s VARCHAR(50)
)
RETURNS int AS
BEGIN
set @s = substring(@s,patindex('%[0-9]%',@s),len(@s)-patindex('%[0-9]%',@s) + 1)
if patindex('%[^0-9]%',@s) = 0
return @s
set @s = substring(@s,1,patindex('%[^0-9]%',@s)-1)
return cast(@s as int)
end
and then call
select max(dbo.getFirstNumeric(yourColumn)) from yourTable
if you are using SQL Server 2005 or never you can also use the solution posted by Sung Meister
As far as I know you would need to create a process (or user defined function) to scrub the column, so that you can actually convert it to an INT or other appropriate datatype, then you can take the max of that.
By using user defined function parse the value to an int and then run the select.
SELECT MAX(dbo.parseVarcharToInt(column)) FROM table
SELECT dbo.RegexReplace('[^0-9]', '','a5453b',1, 1)
and RegexReplace installation like Jason Cohen said
This is an old question, I know - but to add to the knowledge base for others...
Assuming all your values have at least 1 number in them:
Select max(convert(int, SubString(VarName, PATINDEX('%[0-9]%',VarName), Len(VarName))))
from ATable
This is my simple answer. You can try it. But it works for fixed removable string value.
select max(cast(SUBSTRING(T.column,3,len(T.column)) as int)) from tablename T
