views:

216

answers:

3

I have a table with a column 'A'. Some rows have 14 digits for the column 'A' and some have only 12. I need to transform all the entries to 14 digits. The datatype is varchar

I would like to update all the rows at once (one query), adding zeros before the first digit, so an entry like 012345678910 would become 00012345678910.

Is it possible to do it in one single query? Thanks

+4  A: 

This should do what you want:

UPDATE your_table SET column_name = LPAD(column_name, 14, "0")
WHERE LENGTH(column_name) < 14
Taylor Leese
Much better than my solution
Eddie
Thanks a lot for the solution. Just one "detail": the right command is lpad(column_name,14,'0'). the parameter's order was inversed
duduklein
Oops, fixed it.
Taylor Leese
A: 

just update all rows which length is 12, and prepend '00'

UPDATE `table`
SET `col` = '00'+`col`
WHERE LENGTH(`col`) = 12
knittl
A: 
update table1 set columnA=concat('00',columnA) where char_length(columnA)=12
Eddie