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phaze
Starting Member
42 Posts |
 Posted - 2010-01-26 : 18:31:27
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| how would i cast a string to date?for example my column has this 9/21/2009 as a string and i want to make it into a date |
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Lamprey
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker
4614 Posts |
Posted - 2010-01-26 : 18:38:54
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You can simply CAST or CONVERT it. If you are concerned about the regional settings you can use CONVERT with a STYLE parameter. For example:CAST(MyString AS DATETIME)CONVERT(DATETIME, MyString)CONVERT(DATETIME, MyString, 101) |
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phaze
Starting Member
42 Posts |
Posted - 2010-01-26 : 18:44:03
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| now what if i wanted to change my entire column to datetime? |
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russell
Pyro-ma-ni-yak
5072 Posts |
Posted - 2010-01-26 : 20:17:26
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| ALTER TABLE tableName ALTER COLUMN columnName DATETIME; |
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Kristen
Test
22859 Posts |
Posted - 2010-01-27 : 04:17:56
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That will make an implicit cast though, so be careful that your dates will be preserved.If you do SELECT CAST('01/02/03' AS DATETIME)that will tell you how an implicit cast will treat each of the three date parts  If that is not the right implicit cast for your date format you will need to:Add a new, temporary, column with DATETIME datatypeUPDATE the table to convert the existing datetime column to the new, temporary, one using EXPLICIT CONVERT() with appropriate format (3rd parameter) specifiedDrop the old columnRename the temporary column to the original nameYou may also have to recreate any indexes on the original column; hopefully no foreign keys using it! |
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casting string to datetime