SQL/scripting (Substring?) question

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May 6th, 2003, 01:39 PM

vb.net

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SQL/scripting (Substring?) question

Hi all.

This page, http://pjshimmer.tripod.com/movies3.html, contains info of my movie collection. I have the title and year in one table cell, as in Lord of the Rings (2001). I intend to put all the info in an Access database, but I would like to have separate fields for Title and Year. So I wonder if there is a script or SQL statement to achieve this?

The pseudocode can work like this:

1. Find open parenthesis "(" in field -Table-
2. select everything after "("
3. move the selection to the new field -Year-

Any help on achieving this would be appreciated, as I don't want to retype 500 year fields!

Last edited by vb.net : May 6th, 2003 at 01:41 PM.

May 16th, 2003, 12:12 AM

merl

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and your db is?

May 16th, 2003, 07:54 AM

r937

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the db was mentioned, merl -- Access

load the titles into a table with a column called title

then create a second table like this:

Code:

select Left(title,Len(title)-Instr(title,'(')-1) as titleonly
     , Mid(title,Instr(title,'(')+1,4)               as yearonly
  into newtable
  from firsttable

you might run into trouble with titles like

Xxxxxxx (Yyyyyy) Zzzzzz (1971) -- title contained parenthesis

Aaaaaaaaaaaa Bbbbbbbbbb -- title had no parenthesized year

so run a quick check by looking at the yearonly column that was created --

Code:

select titleonly, yearonly
  from newtable
 where yearonly < '1900'
    or yearonly > '2003'

rudy
http://r937.com/

May 19th, 2003, 08:57 PM

merl

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You're right r937. I'm such a fool. My apologies.

May 19th, 2003, 10:32 PM

r937

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no prob

braincramps -- i have them regularly too

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