Re: SQL function equivalent to TestN?

"RPG400-L" <rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote on 12/22/2016 02:01:15
PM:

This technique will likely perform better than using regular expressions

to

test for a valid numeric:

values length( trim( translate( '123,456,789.00-', ' ',

'01234567890,.-', '

' ) ) )

Likely performed better, yes. but with much less accuracy. I'm
not belittling the idea, but the problem is that TRANSLATE can't tell the
difference between one decimal character and multiple, one sign character
or multiple, national delimiters, or embedded blanks vs. leading/trailing
blanks. Not all of the following are numeric but that method of using
TRANSLATE will treat them all as such.

'-123,456,789.00'
'123,456,789.00-'
'123.456.789,00-'
'.123 .456 .789'
'123-456-7890'

Sincerely,

Dave Clark