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

Get the last character

Right(@string, len(@String) - (len(@String) - 1))

Answer 2

I love @bill-hoenig 's answer; however, I was using a subquery and I got caught up because the REVERSE function needed two sets of parentheses. Took me a while to figure that one out!

SELECT
   -- Return comma delimited list of all payment reasons for this Visit
   REVERSE(STUFF(REVERSE((
        SELECT DISTINCT
               CAST(CONVERT(varchar, r1.CodeID) + ' - ' + c.Name + ', ' AS VARCHAR(MAX))
          FROM VisitReason r1
          LEFT JOIN ReasonCode c        ON c.ID = r1.ReasonCodeID
         WHERE p.ID = r1.PaymentID
         FOR XML PATH('')
              )), 1, 2, ''))                        ReasonCode
  FROM Payments p

Answer 3

This is quite late, but interestingly never mentioned yet.

select stuff(x,len(x),1,'')

ie:

take a string x
go to its last character
remove one character
add nothing

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

Try this:

select substring('test string', 1, (len('test string') - 1))

Answer 6

you can create function

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[TRUNCRIGHT] (@string NVARCHAR(max), @len int = 1)
RETURNS NVARCHAR(max)
AS
BEGIN
    IF LEN(@string)<@len
        RETURN ''
    RETURN LEFT(@string, LEN(@string) - @len)
END