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qman
Constraint Violating Yak Guru

USA
442 Posts
Posted - 10/30/2013 :  11:37:48  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
How can I get rid of comma's if not part of a "valid" value?
For instance, I have a 'Sample' table that contains a 'State' column
The values in the column could be empty, contain states separated by a comma, or contain one or more single commas. I want to remove those, while keeping states with a comma separating them.
Thoughts...?

CURRENT
TABLE = 'Sample'
COLUMN = 'State'

State
Alabama
, 
Alaska, Arizona
California, Colorado
empty string
, 
empty string
, , 
Deleware, Georgia, Utah

DESIRED RESULTS

State
Alabama
empty string 
Alaska, Arizona
California, Colorado
empty string 
empty string 
Deleware, Georgia, Utah

djj55
Constraint Violating Yak Guru

USA
352 Posts
Posted - 10/30/2013 :  11:47:54  Show Profile  Reply with Quote 
DELETE FROM mytable WHERE LTRIM(REPLACE(State, ',', '')) = ''


Note this may not be too fast
djj
Edited by - djj55 on 10/30/2013 11:48:17
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visakh16
Very Important crosS Applying yaK Herder

India
52326 Posts
Posted - 10/30/2013 :  12:48:00  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Why delete? As per OPs required output it should be just this


UPDATE Sample
SET State = ''
WHERE LEN(LTRIM(REPLACE(State,',','')))=0


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SQL Server MVP
http://visakhm.blogspot.com/
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qman
Constraint Violating Yak Guru

USA
442 Posts
Posted - 10/30/2013 :  13:37:27  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Thanks to you both...., I ended up using the update solutions which did the trick.
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djj55
Constraint Violating Yak Guru

USA
352 Posts
Posted - 10/30/2013 :  14:59:16  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Sorry I thought from the output that the blank lines were removed.

djj
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madhivanan
Premature Yak Congratulator

India
22864 Posts
Posted - 10/31/2013 :  02:42:10  Show Profile  Send madhivanan a Yahoo! Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by djj55

Sorry I thought from the output that the blank lines were removed.

djj

In that case you can use WHERE clause not DELETE statement

Madhivanan

Failing to plan is Planning to fail
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