Extract numbers from a field in PostgreSQL - regex

Question

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:

Answer 1

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Consider pitfalls for outdated versions: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

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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!