Sometimes you need to pad a string with spaces. Or perhaps you’ll pad it with another character. Sometimes you need to pad it on the left. Other times you need to pad it on the right. Or maybe you need to pad it on both sides.
All of the above can be done in MySQL using the LPAD() and/or RPAD() string functions.
When working with MySQL, you might occasionally encounter situations where you need to pad a bunch of numbers with leading zeros.
Perhaps you have a requirement that all numbers have three digits, but in the data you’ve been supplied, the numbers range from a single digit, to two, and maybe three digits. Your requirement might be to pad all numbers with leading zeros, but only to make up for any shortfall in the three digit requirement.
The LPAD() function does exactly what you want in this scenario.
In SQL Server, you can use the T-SQL REPLACE() function to replace all instances of a given string with another string. For example, you can replace all occurrences of a certain word with another word.
The MySQL REPLACE() function enables you to replace all occurrences of a substring with another string. It allows you to do things like, replace all occurrences of one word with another word, etc.
This article demonstrates its usage.
This article demonstrates how to repeat a string multiple times in MySQL using the REPEAT() function.
As the name suggests, the REPEAT() function can be used to repeat a string. More specifically, it allows you to specify how many times the string should be repeated.
Using a backslash to escape single quotes is a commonly used technique to ensure that the single quotes don’t interfere with MySQL‘s handling of the full string.
Single quotes are used to surround a string, so a single quote within the string itself could cause havoc if it isn’t properly escaped. Simply inserting a backslash immediately before the quote mark ensures that MySQL doesn’t terminate the string prematurely.
However, there may be occasions where you want the backslash to remain. For example, you might intend to use the string in an SQL statement, and therefore, you want it to be properly escaped first.
This is where the QUOTE() function comes in.
The MySQL QUOTE() function quotes a string to produce a result that can be used as a properly escaped data value in an SQL statement. The string is returned enclosed by single quotation marks and with each instance of backslash (\), single quote ('), ASCII NUL, and Control+Z preceded by a backslash.
MySQL has a number of string functions that return the position of a substring within a string. More specifically, they return the position of the first occurrence within the string (or the first occurrence after a given starting point).
The functions I’m referring to are as follows:
INSTR()LOCATE()POSITION()Below is an overview of each one.
When working with MySQL, you can use the CONV() function to convert a number from one base to another. It takes three arguments; the number to convert, the original base, and the base you want to convert it to.
In MySQL you can use the BIN() function to return a binary representation of a number. This function actually returns a string representation of the binary value.
MySQL has a BIT_LENGTH() function that allows you to get the length of a string, measured in bits.
This function is similar to the LENGTH() function, which returns the length of a string in bytes. The same is true for the OCTET_LENGTH() function, which is a synonym for the LENGTH() function.