Remove bad characters from a string

This simple CTE can be used to remove bad characters in string. It will take string and allowed characters and returns neat string. Change the @AllowedPattern as you wish and check the output string. For example if you have a string abc@#$()123 and you want a string abc123, Set allowedPattern to '0-9a-z. With little tweak this can be converted to a function.





DECLARE @String VARCHAR(8000),
@AllowedPattern VARCHAR(100),
@Holder VARCHAR(8000)
SET @String = '!@#$% 123 ??abc##rd,,,'
SET @AllowedPattern = '0-9a-z'
SET @Holder = ''

;WITH t1 AS (SELECT 1 N UNION ALL SELECT 1 N),
t2 AS (SELECT 1 N FROM t1 x, t1 y),
t3 AS (SELECT 1 N FROM t2 x, t2 y),
t4 AS (SELECT 1 N FROM t3 x, t3 y),
tally AS (SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) AS num
          FROM t4 x, t4 y)
SELECT @Holder = @Holder + SUBSTRING(@String,num,1)
FROM tally
WHERE num <= LEN(@String)
AND PATINDEX('['+@AllowedPattern+']',SUBSTRING(@String,num,1)) = 1

SELECT @Holder

Convert a given string into Lowercase without using LOWER..

Continuation to previous post...converting a string to lower case string

CREATE FUNCTION udfLower

(

   @InputString NVARCHAR(MAX)

)

RETURNS NVARCHAR(MAX)

AS

BEGIN

   DECLARE @LowerString    NVARCHAR(MAX)  = ''

   DECLARE @Counter        INT            = 1

   DECLARE @Character      CHAR           = ''

   DECLARE @AsciiValue     TINYINT

   DECLARE @NewAsciiValue  TINYINT

   WHILE (@Counter <= LEN(@InputString))

   BEGIN

      SET @Character = SUBSTRING(@InputString,@Counter,1)

      IF ASCII(@Character) BETWEEN 65 AND 90

      BEGIN

         SET @NewAsciiValue = ASCII(@Character) + 32

         SET @LowerString = @LowerString + CHAR(@newAsciiValue)

      END

      ELSE

      BEGIN

         SET @LowerString = @LowerString + @Character

      END

      SET @Counter = @Counter + 1

   END

   RETURN @LowerString

END

GO

SELECT dbo.udfLower('this is a test STRingdadas@#@#@')

Convert given string into upper case with out using builtin UPPER function

How to convert a given string into upper case string without using builtin UPPER function. Below is the code.

CREATE FUNCTION udfUpper

(

   @InputString NVARCHAR(MAX)

)

RETURNS NVARCHAR(MAX)

AS

BEGIN

   DECLARE @UpperString    NVARCHAR(MAX)  = ''

   DECLARE @Counter        INT            = 1

   DECLARE @Character      CHAR           = ''

   DECLARE @AsciiValue     TINYINT

   DECLARE @NewAsciiValue  TINYINT

   WHILE (@Counter <= LEN(@InputString))

   BEGIN

      SET @Character = SUBSTRING(@InputString,@Counter,1)

      IF ASCII(@Character) BETWEEN 97 AND 122

      BEGIN

         SET @NewAsciiValue = ASCII(@Character) - 32

         SET @UpperString = @UpperString + CHAR(@newAsciiValue)

      END

      ELSE

      BEGIN

         SET @UpperString = @UpperString + @Character

      END

      SET @Counter = @Counter + 1

   END

   RETURN @UpperString

END

GO

SELECT dbo.udfUpper('this is a test STRingdadas@#@#@')

Create a flat file utility

This is my first post WRT C# and/OR VB.NET. At work I was given a task to create a utility that will generate a flat file where we can pass database servername, databasename, procedurename (no parameterized procs and which spit out multiple resultsets), Output file path, output file name, fileextension, column delimiter (comma,tab,colon,semicolon,pipe), header required (Yes/no/y/n), append timestamp to filename, row terminator(unix/windows). I came up with a solution to create a console application in both c# and VB.NET.

Here is the VB.NET code. This works only with SQL Server connections

Example:

CreateFlatFile.exe Server DB Procedure FilePath FileName .csv colon y y unix. Syntax is same for C# as well.

VB code
Csharp code