Extract part of a string in SQL

Question

In SQL Server 2008 R2 I need to extract from a string everything between the character 50 and 60. I've searched for a similar function on the internet but didn't really find something which can address the problem.

I can do it on Excel with a formula like: MID(A2, 50, 10)

Answer 1

The sql function is called substring

  substring(fieldname,50,10)

Answer 2

If you need more flexibility, for instance if the separation does not occur in the same place each time you can use CHARINDEX. Here are a couple examples.

REVERSE(LEFT(REVERSE(fieldname),CHARINDEX(' ',REVERSE(fieldname))))

If your string is "AA 1235 A9" the output will be A9.

REPLACE(STUFF(fieldname,1,CHARINDEX('- ',fieldname),''),REVERSE(LEFT(REVERSE(fieldname),CHARINDEX(' ',REVERSE(fieldname)))),'')

Adding on to the first bit of code you can also pull the middle portion which will result in 1235. The ' ' is flexible and if there is a hyphen, asterisk or some other symbol/identifier you need to use then just use that instead of the space.