How to count instances of character in SQL Column

Question

I have an sql column that is a string of 100 \'Y\' or \'N\' characters. For example:

YYNYNYYNNNYYNY...

What is the easiest way

Answer 1

Maybe something like this...

SELECT
    LEN(REPLACE(ColumnName, 'N', '')) as NumberOfYs
FROM
    SomeTable

Answer 2

The easiest way is by using Oracle function:

SELECT REGEXP_COUNT(COLUMN_NAME,'CONDITION') FROM TABLE_NAME

Answer 3

If you want to count the number of instances of strings with more than a single character, you can either use the previous solution with regex, or this solution uses STRING_SPLIT, which I believe was introduced in SQL Server 2016. Also you’ll need compatibility level 130 and higher.

ALTER DATABASE [database_name] SET COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL = 130

.

--some data
DECLARE @table TABLE (col varchar(500))
INSERT INTO @table SELECT 'whaCHAR(10)teverCHAR(10)whateverCHAR(10)'
INSERT INTO @table SELECT 'whaCHAR(10)teverwhateverCHAR(10)'
INSERT INTO @table SELECT 'whaCHAR(10)teverCHAR(10)whateverCHAR(10)~'

--string to find
DECLARE @string varchar(100) = 'CHAR(10)'

--select
SELECT 
    col
  , (SELECT COUNT(*) - 1 FROM STRING_SPLIT (REPLACE(REPLACE(col, '~', ''), 'CHAR(10)', '~'), '~')) AS 'NumberOfBreaks'
FROM @table

Answer 4

Here's what I used in Oracle SQL to see if someone was passing a correctly formatted phone number:

WHERE REPLACE(TRANSLATE('555-555-1212','0123456789-','00000000000'),'0','') IS NULL AND
LENGTH(REPLACE(TRANSLATE('555-555-1212','0123456789','0000000000'),'0','')) = 2

The first part checks to see if the phone number has only numbers and the hyphen and the second part checks to see that the phone number has only two hyphens.