SQL: Obtaining Substring Prior to Dash Character. From 'ABC-123' to just 'ABC'

Question

I have a table CARM with fields (columns) ID and AREA_DESC.

In the AREA_DESC field, I have some values that show as follow:

AREA_DESC
--------------
Felisberto-001
Ana
Mark-02
Maria
--------------

What I would like to do, is to display these values in this way:

AREA_DESC
--------------
Felisberto
Ana
Mark
Maria
--------------

As you may notices, I would like to only display the string prior to the dash - only. In other words, I would like to drop the dash - and numbers after the dash -

This is the query I have tried so far:

SELECT ID, AREA_DESC ,SUBSTRING(AREA_DESC,0,CHARINDEX('-', AREA_DESC)) as area 
FROM CARM

... and what's the problem? What you describe, is that the obtained or the desired result? — Dominique, Apr 24 '19 at 13:28
Possible duplicate of [substring in sql server 2008](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20878304/substring-in-sql-server-2008) — Zack, Apr 24 '19 at 15:08

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 24 '19 at 13:16

1

The simplest method is to add a '-' for the charindex():

SELECT ID, AREA_DESC,
       LEFT(AREA_DESC, CHARINDEX('-', AREA_DESC + '-')) as area
FROM CARM;

Notice that this also uses LEFT() it saves an argument in the string operation.

answered Apr 24 '19 at 13:16

Gordon Linoff

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 24 '19 at 13:16

0

You can use left() instead with addition of '-' at the end of string:

select ID, AREA_DESC, left(AREA_DESC, charindex('-', AREA_DESC + '-'))
from CARM;

answered Apr 24 '19 at 13:16

Yogesh Sharma

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SQL: Obtaining Substring Prior to Dash Character. From 'ABC-123' to just 'ABC'

2 Answers2