I have to replace a string pattern in SQL with empty string, could anyone please suggest me?
Input String 'AC001,AD001,AE001,SA001,AE002,SD001'
Output String 'AE001,AE002
There are the 4 digit codes with first 2 characters "alphabets" and last two are digits. This is always a 4 digit code. And I have to replace all codes except the codes starting with "AE".
I can have 0 or more instances of "AE" codes in the string. The final output should be a formatted string "separated by commas" for multiple "AE" codes as mentioned above.
Here is one option calling regex_replace multiple times, eliminating the "not required" strings little by little in each iteration to arrive at the required output.
SELECT regexp_replace(
regexp_replace(
regexp_replace(
'AC001,AD001,AE001,SA001,AE002,SD001', '(?<!AE)\d{3},{0,1}', 'X','g'
),'..X','','g'
),',$','','g'
)
See Demo here
I would convert the list to an array, unnest that to rows then filter out those that should be kept and aggregate it back to a string:
select string_agg(t, ',')
from unnest(string_to_array('AC001,AD001,AE001,SA001,AE002,SD001',',') as x(t)
where x.t like 'AE%'; --<< only keep those
This is independent of the number of elements in the string and can easily be extended to support more complex conditions.
This is a good example why storing comma separated values in a single column is not such a good idea to begin with.
Related
I have a table with unwanted hidden characters such as my_table:
id
fruits
1
STuff1 stuff_2 ����������������������
2
Blahblah-blahblah �������������
3
nothing
How do I remove ���������������������� when selecting this column?
Current query:
SELECT fruits, TRIM(REGEXP_REPLACE(fruits, r'[^a-zA-Z,0-9,-]', ' ')) AS new_fruits
FROM `project-id.MYDATASET.my_table`
This query is too flaw because I'm worried if I accidentally exclude/replace important data. I only want to be specific on this weird characters.
Upon opening the data as csv, the weird characters shows as <0x00>. How do I solve this?
First you have to identify which is this character, because as it is a non printable this sign is just a random representation. For replace it without remove any other important information, do the following:
identify the hexadecimal of the character. Copy from csv and past on this site:
Use the replace function in bigquery replacing the char of this hex, as following:
SELECT trim(replace(string_field_1,chr(0xfffd)," ")) FROM `<project>.<dataset>.<table>`;
if your character result is different than fffd, put you value on the chr() function
I am using BigQuery on Google Cloud Platform to extract data from GDELT. This uses an SQL syntax and regular expressions.
I have a column of data (called V2Tone), in which each cell looks like this:
1.55763239875389,2.80373831775701,1.24610591900312,4.04984423676012,26.4797507788162,2.49221183800623,299
To select only the first number (i.e., the number before the first comma) using regular expressions, we use this:
regexp_replace(V2Tone, r',.*', '')
How can we select only the second number (i.e., the number between the first and second commas)?
How about the third number (i.e., the number between the second and third commas)?
I understand that re2 syntax (https://github.com/google/re2/wiki/Syntax) is used here, but my understanding of how to put that all together is limited.
If anything is unclear, please let me know. Thank you for your help as I learn to use regular expressions.
Below example is for BigQuery Standard SQL using super simple SPLIT approach
#standardSQL
SELECT
SPLIT(V2Tone)[SAFE_OFFSET(0)] first_number,
SPLIT(V2Tone)[SAFE_OFFSET(1)] second_number,
SPLIT(V2Tone)[SAFE_OFFSET(2)] third_number
FROM `project.dataset.table`
If for some reason you need/want to use regexp here - use below
#standardSQL
SELECT
REGEXP_EXTRACT(V2Tone, r'^(.*?),') first_number,
REGEXP_EXTRACT(V2Tone, r'^(?:(?:.*?),)(.*?),') second_number,
REGEXP_EXTRACT(V2Tone, r'^(?:(?:.*?),){2}(.*?),') third_number,
REGEXP_EXTRACT(V2Tone, r'^(?:(?:.*?),){4}(.*?),') fifth_number
FROM `project.dataset.table`
Note use of REGEXP_EXTRACT instead of REGEXP_REPLACE
You can play, test above options with dummy string from your question as below
#standardSQL
WITH `project.dataset.table` AS (
SELECT '1.55763239875389,2.80373831775701,1.24610591900312,4.04984423676012,26.4797507788162,2.49221183800623,299' V2Tone
)
SELECT
SPLIT(V2Tone)[SAFE_OFFSET(0)] first_number,
SPLIT(V2Tone)[SAFE_OFFSET(1)] second_number,
SPLIT(V2Tone)[SAFE_OFFSET(2)] third_number,
REGEXP_EXTRACT(V2Tone, r'^(.*?),') first_number_re,
REGEXP_EXTRACT(V2Tone, r'^(?:(?:.*?),)(.*?),') second_number_re,
REGEXP_EXTRACT(V2Tone, r'^(?:(?:.*?),){2}(.*?),') third_number_re,
REGEXP_EXTRACT(V2Tone, r'^(?:(?:.*?),){4}(.*?),') fifth_number_re
FROM `project.dataset.table`
with output :
first_number second_number third_number first_number_re second_number_re third_number_re fifth_number_re
1.55763239875389 2.80373831775701 1.24610591900312 1.55763239875389 2.80373831775701 1.24610591900312 26.4797507788162
I don't know of a single regex replace which could be used to isolate a single number in your CSV string, because we need to remove things on both sides of the match, in general. But, we can chain together two calls to regex_replace. For example, if you wanted to target the third number in the CSV string, we could try this:
regexp_replace(regexp_replace(V2Tone, r'^(?:(?:\d+(?:\.\d+)?),){2}', ''),
r',.*', ''))
The pattern I am using to strip of the first n numbers is this:
^(?:(?:\d+(?:\.\d+)?),){n}
This just removes a number, followed by a comma, n times, from the beginning of the string.
Demo
Here is a solution with a single regex replace:
^([^,]+(?:,|$)){2}([^,]+(?:,|$))*|^.*$
Demo
\n is added to the negated character class in the demo to avoid matching accross lines in m|multiline mode.
Usage:
regexp_replace(V2Tone, r'^([^,]+(?:,|$)){2}([^,]+(?:,|$))*|^.*$', '$1')
Explanation:
([^,]+(?:,|$){n} captures everything to the next comma or the end of the string n times
([^,]+(?:,|$))* captures the rest 0 or more times
^.*$ capture everything if we cannot match n times
And then, finally, we can reinsert the nth match using $1.
How can I extract the text up to the 4th instance of a character in a column?
I'm selecting text out of a column called filter_type up to the fourth > character.
To accomplish this, I've been trying to find the position of the fourth > character, but it's not working:
select substring(filter_type from 1 for position('>' in filter_type))
You can use the pattern matching function in Postgres.
First figure out a pattern to capture everything up to the fourth > character.
To start your pattern you should create a sub-group that captures non > characters, and one > character:
([^>]*>)
Then capture that four times to get to the fourth instance of >
([^>]*>){4}
Then, you will need to wrap that in a group so that the match brings back all four instances:
(([^>]*>){4})
and put a start of string symbol for good measure to make sure it only matches from the beginning of the String (not in the middle):
^(([^>]*>){4})
Here's a working regex101 example of that!
Once you have the pattern that will return what you want in the first group element (which you can tell at the online regex on the right side panel), you need to select it back in the SQL.
In Postgres, the substring function has an option to use a regex pattern to extract text out of the input using a 'from' statement in the substring.
To finish, put it all together!
select substring(filter_type from '^(([^>]*>){4})')
from filter_table
See a working sqlfiddle here
If you want to match the entire string whenever there are less than four instances of >, use this regular expression:
^(([^>]*>){4}|.*)
You can also use a simple, non-regex solution:
SELECT array_to_string((string_to_array(filter_type, '>'))[1:4], '>')
The above query:
splits your string into an array, using '>' as delimeter
selects only the first 4 elements
transforms the array back to a string
substring(filter_type from '^(([^>]*>){4})')
This form of substring lets you extract the portion of a string that matches a regex pattern.
You can also split the string, then choose the N'th element inside the result list. For example:
SELECT SPLIT_PART('aa,bb,cc', ',', 2)
will return: bb.
This function is defined as:
SPLIT_PART(string, delimiter, position)
In order to look at this problem, I did the following (all of the code below is available on the fiddle here):
CREATE TABLE s
(
a TEXT
);
I then created a PL/pgSQL function to generate random strings as follows.
CREATE FUNCTION f() RETURNS TEXT LANGUAGE SQL AS
$$
SELECT STRING_AGG(SUBSTR('abcdef>', CEIL(RANDOM() * 7)::INTEGER, 1), '')
FROM GENERATE_SERIES(1, 40)
$$;
I got the code from here and modified it so that it would produce strings with lots of > characters for testing purposes.
I then manually inserted a few strings at the beginning so that a quick look would tell me if the code was working as anticipated.
INSERT INTO s VALUES
('afsad>adfsaf>asfasf>afasdX>asdffs>asfdf>'),
('23433>433453>4>4559>455>3433>'),
('adfd>adafs>afadsf>'), -- only 3 '>'s!
('babedacfab>feaefbf>fedabbcbbcdcfefefcfcd'),
('e>>>>>'), -- edge case - multiple terminal '>'s
('aaaaaaa'); -- edge case - no '>'s whatsoever
The reason I put in the records with fewer than 4 >s is because the accepted answer (see discussion at the end of this answer) puts forward a solution which should return the entire string if this is the case!
On the fiddle, I then added 50,000 records as follows:
INSERT INTO s
SELECT f() FROM GENERATE_SERIES(1, 50000);
I also created a table s on a home laptop (16GB RAM, 500MB NVMe SSD) and populated it with 40,000,000 (50M) records - times also shown.
Now, my reading of the question is that we need to extract the string up to but not including the 4th > character.
The first solution (from treecon) was this one (I also show them running on the fiddle, but to save space here, I've only included the partial output of EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS, VERBOSE)) - the times shown are typical over a few runs:
EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS, VERBOSE)
SELECT
ARRAY_TO_STRING((STRING_TO_ARRAY(a, '>'))[1:4], '>'),
a
FROM s;
Result (only key parts included):
Seq Scan on public.s
Execution Time: 81.807 ms
40M Time: 46 seconds
A regex solution which works (significantly faster):
EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS, VERBOSE)
SELECT
SUBSTRING(a FROM '^(?:[^>]*>){0,3}[^>]*'),
a
FROM s;
Result:
Seq Scan on public.s
Execution Time: 74.757 ms
40M Time: 32 seconds
The accepted answer fails on many levels (see the fiddle). It leaves a > at the end and fails on various strings even when modified. Also, the solution proposed to include strings with fewer than 4 >s (i.e. ^(([^>]*>){4}|.*)) merely returns the original string (see end of fiddle).
I have a table with a column po_number of type varchar in Postgres 8.4. It stores alphanumeric values with some special characters. I want to ignore the characters [/alpha/?/$/encoding/.] and check if the column contains a number or not. If its a number then it needs to typecast as number or else pass null, as my output field po_number_new is a number field.
Below is the example:
SQL Fiddle.
I tired this statement:
select
(case when regexp_replace(po_number,'[^\w],.-+\?/','') then po_number::numeric
else null
end) as po_number_new from test
But I got an error for explicit cast:
Simply:
SELECT NULLIF(regexp_replace(po_number, '\D','','g'), '')::numeric AS result
FROM tbl;
\D being the class shorthand for "not a digit".
And you need the 4th parameter 'g' (for "globally") to replace all occurrences.
Details in the manual.
For a known, limited set of characters to replace, plain string manipulation functions like replace() or translate() are substantially cheaper. Regular expressions are just more versatile, and we want to eliminate everything but digits in this case. Related:
Regex remove all occurrences of multiple characters in a string
PostgreSQL SELECT only alpha characters on a row
Is there a regexp_replace equivalent for postgresql 7.4?
But why Postgres 8.4? Consider upgrading to a modern version.
Consider pitfalls for outdated versions:
Order varchar string as numeric
WARNING: nonstandard use of escape in a string literal
I think you want something like this:
select (case when regexp_replace(po_number, '[^\w],.-+\?/', '') ~ '^[0-9]+$'
then regexp_replace(po_number, '[^\w],.-+\?/', '')::numeric
end) as po_number_new
from test;
That is, you need to do the conversion on the string after replacement.
Note: This assumes that the "number" is just a string of digits.
The logic I would use to determine if the po_number field contains numeric digits is that its length should decrease when attempting to remove numeric digits.
If so, then all non numeric digits ([^\d]) should be removed from the po_number column. Otherwise, NULL should be returned.
select case when char_length(regexp_replace(po_number, '\d', '', 'g')) < char_length(po_number)
then regexp_replace(po_number, '[^0-9]', '', 'g')
else null
end as po_number_new
from test
If you want to extract floating numbers try to use this:
SELECT NULLIF(regexp_replace(po_number, '[^\.\d]','','g'), '')::numeric AS result FROM tbl;
It's the same as Erwin Brandstetter answer but with different expression:
[^...] - match any character except a list of excluded characters, put the excluded charaters instead of ...
\. - point character (also you can change it to , char)
\d - digit character
Since version 12 - that's 2 years + 4 months ago at the time of writing (but after the last edit that I can see on the accepted answer), you could use a GENERATED FIELD to do this quite easily on a one-time basis rather than having to calculate it each time you wish to SELECT a new po_number.
Furthermore, you can use the TRANSLATE function to extract your digits which is less expensive than the REGEXP_REPLACE solution proposed by #ErwinBrandstetter!
I would do this as follows (all of the code below is available on the fiddle here):
CREATE TABLE s
(
num TEXT,
new_num INTEGER GENERATED ALWAYS AS
(NULLIF(TRANSLATE(num, 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. ', ''), '')::INTEGER) STORED
);
You can add to the 'ABCDEFG... string in the TRANSLATE function as appropriate - I have decimal point (.) and a space ( ) at the end - you may wish to have more characters there depending on your input!
And checking:
INSERT INTO s VALUES ('2'), (''), (NULL), (' ');
INSERT INTO t VALUES ('2'), (''), (NULL), (' ');
SELECT * FROM s;
SELECT * FROM t;
Result (same for both):
num new_num
2 2
NULL
NULL
NULL
So, I wanted to check how efficient my solution was, so I ran the following test inserting 10,000 records into both tables s and t as follows (from here):
EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS, VERBOSE)
INSERT INTO t
with symbols(characters) as
(
VALUES ('ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789')
)
select string_agg(substr(characters, (random() * length(characters) + 1) :: INTEGER, 1), '')
from symbols
join generate_series(1,10) as word(chr_idx) on 1 = 1 -- word length
join generate_series(1,10000) as words(idx) on 1 = 1 -- # of words
group by idx;
The differences weren't that huge but the regex solution was consistently slower by about 25% - even changing the order of the tables undergoing the INSERTs.
However, where the TRANSLATE solution really shines is when doing a "raw" SELECT as follows:
EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS, VERBOSE)
SELECT
NULLIF(TRANSLATE(num, 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. ', ''), '')::INTEGER
FROM s;
and the same for the REGEXP_REPLACE solution.
The differences were very marked, the TRANSLATE taking approx. 25% of the time of the other function. Finally, in the interests of fairness, I also did this for both tables:
EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS, VERBOSE)
SELECT
num, new_num
FROM t;
Both extremely quick and identical!
I have a column in Oracle which can contain up to 5 separate values, each separated by a '|'. Any of the values can be present or missing. Here are come examples of how the data might look:
100-1
10-3|25-1|120/240
15-1|15-3|15-2|120/208
15-1|15-3|15-2|120/208|STA-2
112-123|120/208|STA-3
The values are arbitrary except for the order. The numerical values separated by dashes always come first. There can be 1 to 3 of these values present. The numerical values separated by a slash (if it is present) is next. The string, 'STA', and a numerical value separated by a dash is always last, if it is present.
What I would like to do is reformat this column to only ever include the first three possible values, those being the three numerical values separated by dashes. Afterwards, I want to replace 2nd numeric in each value (the numeric after the dash) using the following pattern:
1 = A
2 = B
3 = C
I would also like to remove the dash afterwards, but not the '|' that separates the values unless there is a trailing '|'.
To give you an idea, here's how the values at the beginning of the post would look after the reformatting:
100A
10C|25A
15A|15C|15B
15A|15C|15B
112ABC
I'm thinking this can be done with regex expressions but it's got me a little confused. Does anyone have a solution?
If I have to solve this problem I will solve it in following ways.
SELECT
REGEXP_REPLACE(column,'\|\d+\/\d+(\|STA-\d+)?',''),
REGEXP_REPLACE(column,'(\d+)-(1)([^\d])','\1A\3'),
REGEXP_REPLACE(column,'(\d+)-(2)([^\d])','\1B\3'),
REGEXP_REPLACE(column,'(\d+)-(3)([^\d])','\1C\3'),
REGEXP_REPLACE(column,'(\d+)-(123)([^\d])','\1ABC')
FROM table;
Explanation: Let us break down each REGEXP_REPLACE statement one by one.
REGEXP_REPLACE(column,'\|\d+\/\d+(\|STA-\d+)?','')
This will replace the end part like 120/208|STA-2 with empty string so that further processing is easy.
Finding match was easy but replacing A for 1, B for 2 and C for 3 was not possible ( as per my knowledge ) So I did those matching and replacements separately.
In each regex from second statement (\d+)-(yourNumber)([^\d]) first group is number before - then yourNumber is either 1,2,3 or 123 followed by |.
So the replacement will be according to yourNumber.
All demos here from version 1 to 5.
Note:- I have just done replacement for combination of yourNUmber for those present in question. You can do likewise for other combinations too.
you can do this in one line, but you can write simple function to do that
SELECT str, REGEXP_REPLACE(str,'(\|\d+\/\d+)?(\|STA-\d+)?','') cut
, REGEXP_REPLACE(REGEXP_REPLACE(str,'(\|\d+\/\d+)?(\|STA-\d+)?',''), '(\-)([1,2]*)(3)([1,2]*)', '\1\2C\4') rep3toC
, REGEXP_REPLACE(REGEXP_REPLACE(REGEXP_REPLACE(str,'(\|\d+\/\d+)?(\|STA-\d+)?',''), '(\-)([1,2]*)(3)([1,2]*)', '\1\2C\4'), '(\-)([1,C]*)(2)([1,C]*)', '\1\2B\4') rep2toB
, REGEXP_REPLACE(REGEXP_REPLACE(REGEXP_REPLACE(REGEXP_REPLACE(str,'(\|\d+\/\d+)?(\|STA-\d+)?',''), '(\-)([1,2]*)(3)([1,2]*)', '\1\2C\4'), '(\-)([1,C]*)(2)([1,C]*)', '\1\2B\4'), '(\-)([B,C]*)(1)([B,C]*)', '\1\2A\4') rep1toA
, REGEXP_REPLACE(REGEXP_REPLACE(REGEXP_REPLACE(REGEXP_REPLACE(REGEXP_REPLACE(str,'(\|\d+\/\d+)?(\|STA-\d+)?',''), '(\-)([1,2]*)(3)([1,2]*)', '\1\2C\4'), '(\-)([1,C]*)(2)([1,C]*)', '\1\2B\4'), '(\-)([B,C]*)(1)([B,C]*)', '\1\2A\4'), '-', '') "rep-"
FROM (
SELECT '100-1' str FROM dual UNION
SELECT '10-3|25-1|120/240' str FROM dual UNION
SELECT '15-1|15-3|15-2|120/208' str FROM dual UNION
SELECT '15-1|15-3|15-2|120/208|STA-2' str FROM dual UNION
SELECT '112-123|120/208|STA-3' FROM dual
) tab