Re: Finding non-alphanumeric characters using SQL

That is a really cool idea! My question may need to go to the RPG list, as that would be my preferred language, but I have a similar problem to solve. The difference is that mine is a text entry field, so all normal characters including punctuation are valid. I could just build up a list of valid characters and use the technique, but I wonder if there is a "better" way. I need to validate at input time as well as clean up the database (maybe - I might have fixed them all). The problem I have is people paste from email and have characters that are not valid on a 5250 display. I'm not sure why it allows them to be entered, but it does. Any suggestion as to whether the below approach is better or if there is an easy way to check for characters outside the "normal" range?
--
Sean Porterfield

-----Original Message-----
From: Elvis Budimlic

I think you're best off TRANSLATing all valid characters to
blanks and then
comparing if field is all blanks or not. If not, you've hit
upon a field
with funny data. Here's an example:

SELECT cnmacc
FROM arstageeo/arcnm
WHERE TRANSLATE(UPPER(cnmacc),'
','0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ')
<> ' '

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