Using a RegEx in a SQL Query

Posted by Jim B on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Jim B
Published on 2010-06-15T13:30:32Z Indexed on 2010/06/15 13:32 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 280

Filed under:

sql

|

regex

|

query

Hey Everyone,

Here's the situation I'm in: We have a field in our database that contains a 3 digit number, surrounded by some text. This number is actually a PK in another table, and I need to extract this out so I can implement a proper FK relationship. Here's an example of what would currently reside in the column:

Some Text Goes Here - (305) Followed By Some More Text

So, what I'm looking to do is extract the '305' from the column, and hopefully end up with a result that looks something like this (pseudo code)

SELECT
   <My Extracted Value>,
   Original Column Text,
   Id
FROM dbo.MyTable

It seems to me that using a Regex match in my query is the most effective way to do this. Can anybody point me in the right direction?

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about sql

SQL SERVER – Concat Strings in SQL Server using T-SQL – SQL in Sixty Seconds #035 – Video

as seen on SQL Authority - Search for 'SQL Authority'
Concatenating string is one of the most common tasks in SQL Server and every developer has to come across it. We have to concat the string when we have to see the display full name of the person by first name and last name. In this video we will see various methods to concatenate the strings. SQL… >>> More
SQL SERVER – Concat Function in SQL Server – SQL Concatenation

as seen on SQL Authority - Search for 'SQL Authority'
Earlier this week, I was delivering Advanced BI training on the subject of “SQL Server 2008 R2″. I had great time delivering the session. During the session, we talked about SQL Server 2010 Denali. Suddenly one of the attendees suggested his displeasure for the product. He said, even though… >>> More
Error with SQL Server Setup 2012 on Windows 2012

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I am trying to install SQL Server on Windows 2012. I was able to finally get the wizard up and running after making some changes on the server, but now it fails no matter what I do with the following error: TITLE: SQL Server Setup failure. SQL Server Setup has encountered the following error: … >>> More
How can I detect which version of SQL (eg SQL 2008 or SQL Azure)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I need to detect which version of SQL I am dealing with to perorm various tasks, I need specifically detect if I am on SQL 2008 or SQL Azure. How can I do this with detection code written in SQL? >>> More
Nested SQL Select statement fails on SQL Server 2000, ok on SQL Server 2005

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Here is the query: INSERT INTO @TempTable SELECT UserID, Name, Address1 = (SELECT TOP 1 [Address] FROM (SELECT TOP 1 [Address] FROM [UserAddress] ua INNER JOIN UserAddressOrder uo ON ua.UserID = uo.UserID WHERE ua.UserID = u.UserID ORDER BY uo.AddressOrder ASC) q ORDER BY AddressOrder… >>> More

Related posts about regex

Find multiple regex in each line and skip result if one of the regex doesn't match

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a list of variables: variables = ['VariableA', 'VariableB','VariableC'] which I'm going to search for, line by line ifile = open("temp.txt",'r') d = {} match = zeros(len(variables)) for line in ifile: emptyCells=0 for i in range(len(variables)): regex = r'('+variables[i]+r')[:|=|\(](-… >>> More
OWASP Regex Repository: Is this regex correct?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I was looking at the regular expression for validating various data types from the (OWASP Regex Repository). One of the regular expressions in there is called safetext and looks like: ^[a-zA-Z0-9\s.\-]+$ My first question is: Is this regular expression correct? complementary question If this… >>> More
Make a Perl-style regex interpreter behave like a basic or extended regex interpreter

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am writing a tool to help students learn regular expressions. I will probably be writing it in Java. The idea is this: the student types in a regular expression and the tool shows which parts of a text will get matched by the regex. Simple enough. But I want to support several different regex… >>> More
JS regex isn't matching, even thought it works with a regex tester

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm writing a piece of client-side javascript code that takes a function and finds the derivative of it, however, the regex that's supposed to match with the power rule fails to work in the context of the javascript program, even though it sucessfully matches when it's used with an independent regex… >>> More
c# RegEx with "|"

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I need to be able to check for a pattern with | in them. For example an expression like d*|*t should return true for a string like "dtest|test". I'm no regex hero so I just tried a couple of things, like: Regex Pattern = new Regex("s*\|*d"); //unable to build because of single backslash Regex Pattern… >>> More