Split text after character with SQL Server Substring

How to split a text after a particular character with the SQL Server Substring function ? Like for example a file name file.txt to separate the file name from its extension. Indeed, it is obvious that splitting a string just before the point character must be done dynamically, i.e., whatever the position of the character is.

How to split a text after a predefined character with a SQL Substring query ?

First, to split a string with SQL Server just after a certain character, use the three following built-in text functions:

1. SUBSTRING() to trim a text by indicating the start and length to be trimmed.
2. CHARINDEX() returns the position of a text to search. The function uses the text to search for, the text to search in and the starting position of the search.
3. LEN() is a function that returns the length of a given text.

By the way, this example is not recursive. However, to make it recursive, integrate the logic in a loop. Then adjust the variable that contains the character in the main string.

This time, here is an example of how to recursively split a string that contains delimiters (like dots, semi-columns or commas) with a simple T-SQL script.

To adapt it to your coding case and make your SQL query work, simply change the @Character variable. And of course, also change the assigned value in the @StartString T-SQL variable.

Example of SQL code to split a text after a specific character using SQL Server Substring function

-- Declaration of variables used as start string, result string and the character used
declare @StartString nvarchar(100)
declare @Result nvarchar(100)
declare @Character nvarchar(10)

-- Set the string, for example 'file.ext' 
set @StartString = 'START_STRING.END_STRING'

-- Set the character or string to search for to split the string in two
set @Character = '.'
set @Result = substring(@StartString,CHARINDEX(@Character, @StartString)+1,len(@StartString))
select @StartString as 'Start String'
select @Result as 'Result String'

Here is another article on text management in SQL, on how to manage strings with more than 8000 characters in T-SQL and specifically stored procedures.

SQL Server text with more than 8000 characters