Removing the First and Last Character From a Table Column in SQL Server 2012

In this article I provide a quick overview of the various Queries to remove the first and last character from a string in SQL Server. To remove the first and last character, we use as an example a simple string and also use a column of a table which contains some name. To do that we can create various queries using SQL functions. So let's have a look at a practical example of how to remove the first and last character from a string in SQL Server. The example is developed in SQL Server 2012 using the SQL Server Management Studio. 

The following are the various queries to remove the first and last character from a string.

To remove first character from string

First we remove the first character from a string. Suppose you take a string Rohatash. The output should be ohatash.

1. Using the SQL Right Function

Example

Declare @name as varchar(30)='Rohatash'

Select right(@name, len(@name)-1) as AfterRemoveFistCharacter

Output

2. Using the Substring Function

Declare @name as varchar(30)='Rohatash'

Select substring(@name, 2, len(@name)-1) as AfterRemoveFirstCharacter

Output

To remove the last character from a string

Now remove the first character from the string. Suppose you have the string Rohatash. The output should be Rohatas.

1. Using the SQL Left Function

Declare @name as varchar(30)='Rohatash'

Select left(@name, len(@name)-1) as AfterRemoveLastCharacter

Output

2. Using the Substring Function

Declare @name as varchar(30)='Rohatash'

Select substring(@name, 1, len(@name)-1) as AfterRemoveLastCharacter

Output

To remove both (the first and last) character from a string

Now we remove the first and last character from a string. Suppose you have the string Rohatash. The output should be ohatas. 

1. Using the SQL Left and Right Functions

Declare @name as varchar(30)='Rohatash'

Declare @n varchar(40) =left(@name, len(@name)-1)

Select right(@n, len(@n)-1)

Output

The above query can be defined as follows:

Select LEFT(RIGHT('rohatash', len('rohatash')-1),len('rohatash')-2)

2. Using the Substring and Len Functions

Declare @string varchar(50)

SET @string='rohatash'

Declare @len varchar(50)

Declare @middle varchar(50)

Select @len=LEN(@string)

Select @middle=substring(@string,2,(@len-2))

Select @middle

Output

The above query can be defined as follows:

Declare @name as varchar(30)='Rohatash'

Select substring(@name,2,(LEN(@name)-2)) 

To remove both (the first and last) character from the table column

Now we create a table named employee using:

Create table Employee

(

EmpID int,

EmpName varchar(30),

EmpSalary int

)

 

The following is the sample data for the employee table:

 

1. Using the Substring and Len Functions

Select EmpName, substring(EmpName,2, len(EmpName)-2) from [Employee]

Output

2. Using the SQL Left and Right Functions

Select EmpName, LEFT(RIGHT(EmpName, len(EmpName)-1),len(EmpName)-2)  from [Employee]

Output