On Thu, 2007-09-06 at 11:08 +0200, Alban Hertroys wrote: > Ow Mun Heng wrote: > > I found 2 new ways to do this. > > > > option 1 > > ------- > > > > create table foo as select unique_id, rtrim(number) as number from foo; > > alter table add primary key... > > create index... > > drop org_table > > alter table rename... > > All this is ~10min > > This only works if you don't have foreign key constraints involving that > table. Otherwise you just lost your data integrity (although I expect an > error to be thrown). Got it.. Don't use FK's so.. I'm safe (for now) > > > option 2 > > ======== > > This I saw in the mysql archives (in my laptop).. when I say this I > > went.. WTF? This is possible?? Dang IT! > > > > update a set number=replace(number,'ABC ', 'ABC') where reptest like '% > > ABC%'; > > Ehrm... yes, nothing special about it. Basic SQL really ;) Hmm.. I feel the salt.. > But shouldn't you be using trim() or rtrim() instead?: > > update table set number = trim(number) Hmm.. didn't think of that. Next time I guess. (in all honestly, I didn't know you can update it on the same process/column/table. I was dumping it to a separate table and updating it.. Now I know.. > > you could probably speed that up by only querying the records that need > trimming, for example: > > create index tmp_idx on table(number) where number != trim(number); > analyze table; > update table set number = trim(number) where number != trim(number); all fields in that column is affected. I have " " (5 spaces) instead of nulls Thanks for the pointers.. ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match