The document discusses various string functions in SQL Server that can manipulate and return values from string inputs. It lists functions such as ASCII, CHAR, LEFT, RIGHT, LEN, LTRIM, REPLACE, SUBSTRING, STUFF, and others. For each function it provides the syntax, arguments expected, and examples of usage. The functions allow performing operations like extracting parts of a string, searching/replacing substrings, concatenating strings, and more.

1. Kumar Krishnan

2. Thanks to
 Shivakumar .U
 Sunil V.M
 Lokesh
 Spoorthi
 Job John
 Vinod Raj

3.  Perform operations on a string (char or
varchar) input value and return a string or
numeric value.
 In simple Terms the STRING FUNCTIONS are used
to used primarily for string manipulation

4.  ASCII
 CHAR
 SUBSTR-(SUBSTRING)
 REPLACE
 REPLICATE
 UPPER
 LEN-(LENGTH)
 CHARINDEX
 PATINDEX
 LEFT
 RIGHT
 LOWER
 LTRIM

5.  STUFF
 DIFFERENCE
 CONCAT
 UNICODE
 SPACE
 STR
 UNICODE
 SOUNDEX
 QOUTENAME
 NCHAR
 RTRIM
 REVERSE

6.  ASCII : ASCII (character_expression)
Arguments: Is an expression of the type char or varchar.
Returns: INT
Ex: SELECT ASCII (‘A’) ------ Returns: 97
 CHAR : CHAR (character_expression)
Arguments: Is an integer from 0 through 255. NULL is returned
if the integer expression is not in this range.
Returns : CHAR
Ex: SELECT CHAR (101) ----- Returns: E.

7.  CHARINDEX ( expressionToFind ,expressionToSearch , start location )
Arguments:
expressionToFind
Is a character expression that contains the sequence to be found.
expressionToFind is limited to 8000 characters.
expressionToSearch
Is a character expression to be searched.
start location
Is an integer or bigint expression at which the search starts. If start
location is not specified, is a negative number, or is 0, the search
starts at the beginning of expressionToSearch.
Return Types:
bigint if expressionToSearch is of the varchar(max), nvarchar(max), or
varbinary(max) data types; otherwise, int.
Ex: SELECT CHARINDEX ('k','kumar',1) ------ 1

8.  CONCAT : CONCAT(string_value1,string_value2,[string value])
Arguments:
String value
A string value to concatenate to the other values.
Return:
String, the length and type of which depend on the input.
Ex : SELECT CONCAT ( 'Happy ', 'Birthday ', 11, '/', '25‘)
Note : CONCAT is Available in the SQL Server 2012

9.  DIFFERENCE ( character_expression , character_expression)
Arguments:
character_expression
Is an alphanumeric expression of character data.
character_expression can be a constant, variable, or column.
Returns:
INT
Ex: SELECT DIFFERENCE ( ‘Kumar’ , ‘umar’ ) ----- 3
The return value ranges from 0 through 4: 0 indicates weak or
no similarity, and 4 indicates strong similarity or the same
values.

10.  LEFT : (character_expression , integer_expression)
Arguments:
character_expression
Is an expression of character or binary data.
integer_expression
Is a positive integer that specifies how many characters of the
character_expression will be return
Return Types:
Returns varchar when character_expression is a non-Unicode
character data type.
Returns nvarchar when character_expression is a Unicode
character data type.
Ex : SELECT LEFT(‘KUMAR’,3) ----- KUM

11.  RIGHT : RIGHT (character_expression , integer_expression)
Arguments
character_expression
Is an expression of character or binary data.
character_expression can be a constant, variable, or column.
Integer_expression
Is a positive integer that specifies how many characters of
character_expression will be returned
Return Types
Returns varchar when character_expression is a non-Unicode
character data type.
Returns nvarchar when character_expression is a Unicode
character data type.
Ex: SELECT RIGHT(‘KUMAR’,3) ----- MAR

12.  LEN : LEN(( string expression )
Arguments
string expression
Is the string expression to be evaluated. string expression can
be a constant, variable, or column of either character or
binary data.
Return Types
bigint if expression is of the varchar(max), nvarchar(max) or
varbinary(max) data types; otherwise, int.
EX: SELECT LEN ( ‘KUMAR’) ------ 5

13.  LTRIM : LTRIM ( character_expression )
Arguments
character_expression
Is an expression of character or binary data.
character_expression can be a constant, variable, or column.
Return Type
varchar or nvarchar
Ex: SELECT LTRIM (‘ KUMAR’) --- KUMAR

14.  REPLACE: REPLACE( string,string_pattern,string_replacement)
Arguments
string_expression
Is the string expression to be searched. string_expression can be of a
character or binary data type.
string pattern
Is the substring to be found. string pattern can be of a character or
binary data type.
string replacement
Is the replacement string. string replacement can be of a character or
binary data type.
Return Types
Returns nvarchar if one of the input arguments is of the nvarchar data
type.
Ex: SELECT (‘KUMAR’,’U’,’UU’) ---- KUUMAR

15.  SUBSTRING : SUBSTRING ( expression ,start , length )
Arguments:
Expression Is a character, binary, text, ntext, or image
expression.
start
Is an integer or bigint expression that specifies where the
returned characters start. If start is less than 1,
length
Is a positive integer or bigint expression that specifies how
many characters of the expression will be returned.
Return Types
Returns character data if expression is one of the supported
character data types
Ex: SELECT SUBSTRING ( ‘MY NAME IS KUMAR’ ,3,3) ---- NAM

16.  STUFF:STUFF (character_expression, start, length, replace_exprn)
Arguments
Is an expression of character data. character_expression can be a
constant, variable, or column of either character or binary data.
start
Is an integer value that specifies the location to start deletion and
insertion
length
Is an integer that specifies the number of characters to delete
Replace expression
Is an expression of character data. character_expression can be a
constant, variable, or column of either character or binary data
Ex: SELECT STUFF( ‘KUMAR’,1,3,’NAMASK’ ) ------NAMASKAR