I appreciate the input. I had been looking at the data manipulation functions Razzak mentioned before going to the list.
Here is what I have: All the information I want to remove from each row is at the beginning of each row. All the information is different (as far as the characters are concerned). All the information is text. I will be able to group the information (so I update many rows at a time) based on another field in each row. In each of the groups the number of characters I remove will depend on the other field in the same row so I will be able to use a WHERE clause. Jim ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bob Thompson Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2010 10:53 AM To: RBASE-L Mailing List Subject: [RBASE-L] - Re: deleting portion of text If the data is the exact same and starts in a certain place, you can use one of the two options... Sample Data: "xxxxxThis is a Test" If all rows started with "xxxxx" you could.. Update tablename set column = (SGET(columname,200*,6)) where (Sget(columnname,5,1)) = 'XXXXX' This would set the column to its value minus the first 5 characters. *200 can be adjusted to column width if desired. Sample Data : "This is xxxxx a Test" Update tablename set columnname = (SRPL(columname,'XXXXX','',0)) where columnname contains 'XXXXX' This would remove the xxxxx if the first characters are to be retained. Note that xxxxx string would be replaced everywhere though. -Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: Jim Belisle <mailto:[email protected]> To: RBASE-L Mailing List <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2010 10:29 AM Subject: [RBASE-L] - deleting portion of text I want to delete a portion of a bunch of information at the beginning of 1200 rows of data. What function would I use to accomplish this? Jim
