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How to count the number of substring occurances in a string

I am using ASE 11.x. I need to write a SQL statement that will return a count of substring occurances in a varchar column.

I tried doing something like this

select char_length('a.b.c') - char_length(replace('a.b.c', '.', ' ')) but looks like ASE 11.x does not support replace function.

How do I get, for example, a count of '.' in string, 'a.b.c' using ASE 11.x T-SQL?

Thanks.

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jdlambert1

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SOLUTION

ChrisKing

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pitsnogle

Since I don't have an ASE 11.x server to test, not sure the syntax is correct. Also, this will work with 11.5, not sure what version you have.

declare @new varchar(255)
declare @count int
declare @marker int

select @new="a.b.c"
select @count=0
select @marker=0

while (@new)!="c"
begin
@marker=patindex("%.%",@new)
@new=substring(@new,@marker,6)
select @count=@count+1
end

select @count

Give it a try and if this don't work, you get the idea and what functions you can use to do the loop and store the count.

good luck,
Rich

nexusSam

parvezworld, do you mean how many records have the given substring in them or how many times within each record within the table that substring appears?
If the former, this is a very simple query:
SELECT COUNT(*) as NumFound FROM <tablename> WHERE CHARINDEX("<pattern>", <textcolumn>) != 0
-- Values in <> brackets should be replaced by whatever they're called in your database

HTH