Re: Extract only numbers from a varchar column

On Tuesday 06 May 2008 07:09:56 Leandro Casadei wrote:
> I need to extract only the first occurence of numbers from a column  that
> is varchar.
<snip>
> abc200xx -> 200
> 340ppsdd -> 340
> 150ytyty555 -> 150

tiger=> select substring('abc200xx300ff','[0-9]+');
 substring
-----------
 200
(1 row)

Time: 0.495 ms
tiger=> select substring('340ppsdd','[0-9]+');
 substring
-----------
 340
(1 row)

Time: 0.480 ms
tiger=> select substring('150ytyty555','[0-9]+');
 substring
-----------
 150
(1 row)

Time: 0.494 ms

tested on 8.2.  i don't have 8.3 here, so i don't know if there will
be type coercion issues there.  doubt it though.

tiger

--
Gerald Timothy Quimpo   bopolissimus@gmail.com
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-- scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2008/01/the_genius_of_donald_knuth_typ.php