A relative dts/sql newbie and just seeing if anyone has
any ideas...

Basically I need a task in my DTS package to check if
there are any non-alphabetic (anything that's not a-z)
characters in the first name and last name fields of a table,
then bust off an email if there is.

I'm not too keen on creating a plethora of sql tasks to
search for every single non-alphabetic character, so does
anyone have any ideas how to condense my code?

Thanks,
John

Something like:

IF firstname LIKE '%^[a-z]%' OR lastname LIKE '%[^a-z]%'

^ works as a logical not on the character or set of characters that follows.

--
Jacco Schalkwijk
SQL Server MVP


"John" <jtaylor (AT) kmznet (DOT) com> wrote

Hey Jacco,
Why is this not working for me? I'd appreciate anyone's assistance, I've
been
attacking this with no signs of success.
I try:
1. SELECT * FROM tablename where lastname NOT LIKE '%[a-z]%'
and it shows me two records where the lastname is blank.
2. SELECT * FROM tablename where lastname LIKE '%^[a-z]%'
and it shows me no records.
3. SELECT * FROM tablename where lastname LIKE '%[^a-z]%'
and it shows me all but 5 records (and those 5 records are just normal
names, no
strange characters or whathaveyou).

What am I doing wrong?
Thanks.


"Jacco Schalkwijk" <jacco.please.reply (AT) to (DOT) newsgroups.mvps.org.invalid> wrote
in message news:uHXVMZSiEHA.4020 (AT) TK2MSFTNGP10 (DOT) phx.gbl...

1. shows you all the rows that where the lastname column doesn't contains
_any_ of the a-z characters. In your case this is only satisfied by empty
strings, but it could also be satisfied by '1', '£%^&' or something similar.
(but not by '&*^a')

2. I made a typo in my post. LIKE '%^[a-z]%' doesn't make sense it this
case, because that looks for any string that includes something like '^a'.

That leaves us with:
3. Your 5 rows might include spaces (at the end)? Also, what is included
between a and z depends on the collation you have. In most collations
accented characters are ordered directly after or with the normal
characters.

--
Jacco Schalkwijk
SQL Server MVP


"John" <jtaylor (AT) kmznet (DOT) com> wrote