Posted by Steve Kass on 09/30/98 11:30

Here's another solution, which should work if you are certain that
the period character . is not part of any of the segments:

SELECT
CASE WHEN value NOT LIKE '%-%-%'
THEN ''
ELSE PARSENAME(REPLACE(value,'-','.'),2) END
FROM @t

Steve Kass
Drew University

wheresjim wrote:
> I have a sql query in which I need to isolate part of the columm value
> and return only that isolated portion. I can only do this within the
> select statement, and cannot add a function or anything like that. I
> would also like to keep this query within sql (I don't want to do this
> in my programming environment)
>
> The string value would normally look like "segment1-segment2-segment3".
> I need to isolate segment2, but I have to be able to account for
> situations in which either one or both dashes are missing (in which
> case returning "" or the whole string is OK. The best I have been able
> to do reliably is to get "segment2-segment3".
>
> Anybody want to take a stab?
>

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