SELECT from 3rd comma in string

Question

I have the following string:

bzip2,1,668,sometext,foo,bar

How can I SELECT only sometext,foo,bar ? The length of the string preceding the 3rd comma may differ and there may be commas within sometext,foo,bar .

I'd like this in as concise code as possible, ie preferably 1 line of code, no loops. But feel free to post any solution you think of.

Answer 1

try this:

Do a substring from 3rd comma to the end of the string.. To find the 3 commas , I am using charindex() function 3 times

  declare @str varchar(50)='bzip2,1,668,some,text'

  select substring(@str,
  CHARINDEX(',',@str,CHARINDEX(',',@str,CHARINDEX(',',@str,1)+1)+1)+1,
  LEN(@str)-CHARINDEX(',',@str,CHARINDEX(',',@str,CHARINDEX(',',@str,1)+1)+1))

result :

some,text

Answer 2

Code:

declare @input varchar(max) = 'bzip2,1,668,s,o,m,e,t,e,x,t,f,o,o,b,a,r'
--declare @input varchar(max) = 'bzip2,,'
declare @thirdCommaPosition int = nullif(charindex(',', @input, nullif(charindex(',', @input, nullif(charindex(',', @input, 1),0)+1),0)+1 ),0)
select stuff(@input, 1, @thirdCommaPosition, '')

Output:

s,o,m,e,t,e,x,t,f,o,o,b,a,r

Edit

Added nullif's to the third comma calculation part, without them it's possible to get inconsistent results.

Answer 3

Here is another idea

DECLARE @xml AS XML,@str AS VARCHAR(50)
    SET @str='bzip2,1,668,sometext,foo,bar'

    SET @xml = CAST(('<X>'+REPLACE(@str,',' ,'</X><X>')+'</X>') AS XML)


        SELECT FinalResult = STUFF(@str,1,SUM(Length)+3,' ' ) FROM (SELECT 
                                Rn = ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY (SELECT 1)) 
                                ,N.value('.', 'varchar(10)') as value
                                ,Length = LEN(N.value('.', 'varchar(10)'))  
                            FROM @xml.nodes('X') as T(N))X 
        WHERE X.Rn<=3

Result

 sometext,foo,bar

Answer 4

I just figured out something that works:

declare @v varchar(max) = 'bzip2,1,668,sometext'
select substring(@v, CHARINDEX(',', @v, CHARINDEX(',', @v, CHARINDEX(',', @v)+1)+1)+1, len(@v))