Using Left for Different Number of Characters

I have account strings that are separated by a different number of characters for each string. I need to pull everything left of a colon ":" to get the first piece of the account strings. Some of the accounts are 3 characters and some are 4. Ex. AAA:BBB:CCC; AAAA:BBB:CCC. I need to pull all the A's for everything left of the first colon. How would I do this?

Accepted answers

rob_marshall

@wld002

You can use them multiple times like this

All comments

rob_marshall

@wld002

Use the find() function as well as the left() function

https://help.anaplan.com/find-b4571668-130a-4de8-a7b2-57439714f344

https://help.anaplan.com/left-9c2a45d9-5af8-433a-b45c-46b0d6ae8462

wld002

not all of my codes have the same amount of characters, some are 3 and some are 4 so these two tutorials really only solved for if I had uniform results

rob_marshall

@wld002

You can use them multiple times like this

jasonblinn

Can probably simplify the 2nd Part to something like: MID(Code, '1st Colon' + 1, '2nd Colon' - '1st Colon' - 1)

In my mind that is easier to follow, and also more scalable if there are more than 3 sections, and I didn't try it and it probably depends on the scale in which you are trying to do it, but I would guess that it performs better than a Left(Right())

https://help.anaplan.com/mid-5e5cc593-8bb2-4417-8daf-ed57b552e2cc

Kanishq17

Hi ,

You can use FIND() , to find position of 1st colon and then use LEFT() to extract character left as LEFT(string , pos-1)

TristanS

@wld002 I would sometimes use the time dimension in combination with the previous function for text calculations that do not have uniform structures. You can use the one below with logic that the others provided. Whether you should do it or not is another question 😋. Example below

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