Author: Ian

How Language Settings can Affect your FORMAT() Results in SQL Server (T-SQL Examples)

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It can be easy to forget that the T-SQL FORMAT() function provides locale-aware formatting. Locale-aware means that the locale can affect the results. In other words, the exact output you get will depend on the locale.

By default, the function uses the language of the current session to determine the locale. However, this can be overridden by passing a “culture” argument to the function. Doing this allows you to provide results for a particular locale without having to change the language of the current session.

This article contains examples of how locale can affect the results when using the FORMAT() function in SQL Server.

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How to Format Negative Values with Brackets in SQL Server (T-SQL)

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Here’s a quick way to add brackets around negative numbers in SQL Server when using the FORMAT() function.

The goal here is that brackets are only added to negative values. No brackets are added to positive values or zeros. Also, the brackets replace any minus sign that would otherwise be displayed (in other words, no minus sign is displayed when the brackets are used).

Although formatting is often best left to the presentation layer, there may be cases that dictate a T-SQL solution in SQL Server. In such cases, hopefully this article helps.

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Standard Numeric Format Strings Supported by FORMAT() in SQL Server

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This article provides a reference for the standard numeric format specifiers that can be used when formatting numbers using the FORMAT() function in SQL Server. Examples included.

Some of the examples use precision specifiers (these consist of one or two digits appended to the format specifier). Precision specifiers can be a value from 0 to 99, which specifies the precision of the result. How it works depends on the format specifier being used. For some format specifiers, it will specify the total number of digits in the result, for others it will specify the number of decimal places. In other cases it will be ignored altogether.

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How to Apply Conditional Formatting to a Number in SQL Server using FORMAT()

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Perhaps one of the lesser-known features of the FORMAT() function in SQL Server is one that enables you to apply conditional formatting to a number.

It’s more of a .NET feature than it is a SQL Server (or T-SQL) feature, but SQL Server/T-SQL supports it all the same, allowing you to take full advantage of the ability to apply conditional formatting to numbers.

It all comes down to the format string you pass to the FORMAT() function.

You can pass a format string that specifies how the number should be formatted, depending on whether it’s positive, negative, or zero.

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What is a Format String in SQL Server?

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In SQL Server, the FORMAT() function enables you to format date/time and number values as a formatted string by passing in a “format string” as the second argument (the first argument is the value that’s being formatted).

Here’s an example of this function in action:

FORMAT(@date, 'dd/MM/yyyy');

In this case the format string is dd/MM/yyyy.

This particular format string specifies that the @date value should be formatted with a two-digit day, two-digit month, and a four-digit year, in that order, and with forward slashes as the separators.

This would result in something like this:

21/05/2019

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Custom Date/Time Format Strings Supported by FORMAT() in SQL Server

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This article provides a reference for the custom date and time format specifiers that can be used when formatting dates and/or times using the FORMAT() function in SQL Server, along with examples.

You can combine any of these format specifiers to produce a customized format string. See below for a code example and an explanation on how custom format strings work.

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Standard Date/Time Format Strings Supported by FORMAT() in SQL Server

Posted on by Ian

This article provides a list of the standard date and time format strings that can be used when formatting dates and/or times using the FORMAT() function in SQL Server, along with examples using different cultures and data types.

These are the standard date and time format specifiers that are supported by the .NET Framework, and therefore, SQL Server. Each standard date and time format string is an alias for a custom date and time format string.

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How to Specify the Invariant Culture when using FORMAT() in SQL Server

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In SQL Server, you can use the FORMAT() function to format date/time and number values as strings. In particular, the function provides “locale-aware” formatting, and the function accepts a “culture” argument, which allows you to specify a culture or language to use for the actual format. For example, you can pass en-us to ensure the results are formatted in US English format.

The culture argument is optional, so if you don’t provide it, the output will be determined by the language of the current session.

The FORMAT() function accepts any culture supported by the .NET Framework as an argument (you’re not limited to the languages explicitly supported by SQL Server).

One of the cultures supported by the .NET Framework is the invariant culture. The invariant culture is culture-insensitive. More specifically, this culture is associated with the English language but not with any country/region.

To specify that FORMAT() should output the results using the invariant culture, simply use "iv" for the culture argument (the third argument).

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