Remove the last character in a string in T-SQL?

Question

How do I remove the last character in a string in T-SQL?

For example:

\'TEST STRING\'

to return:

\'TES         


        

Answer 1

If you want to do this in two steps, rather than the three of REVERSE-STUFF-REVERSE, you can have your list separator be one or two spaces. Then use RTRIM to trim the trailing spaces, and REPLACE to replace the double spaces with ','

select REPLACE(RTRIM('a  b  c  d  '),'  ', ', ')

However, this is not a good idea if your original string can contain internal spaces.

Not sure about performance. Each REVERSE creates a new copy of the string, but STUFF is a third faster than REPLACE.

also see this