Here is one for the tekkies. How to do this in SQL?

Question

Input : String 541862356
Table has 2 columns:
SNO                             SLENGTH
5418                                4
54186                               5
54321                               5
Output should be 54186.
We don't have any other input. i.e. we have to get the closest match for the input string.
How to do this??
Edited by: user12240205 on May 3, 2012 10:51 PM

Answer 1

user12240205 wrote:
We don't have any other input. i.e. we have to get the closest match for the input string.You haven't explained what "closest match" actually means.
Something as simple as this could do what you want with the sample data you've provided...
SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf
  1  WITH t AS (SELECT 5418 sno, 4 cnt FROM DUAL UNION
  2             SELECT 54186, 5 FROM DUAL UNION
  3             SELECT 54321, 5 FROM DUAL)
  4      ,r as (select 541862356 as r from dual)
  5  --
  6  -- end of test data
  7  --
  8  select max(sno)
  9  from   t,r
10* where  instr(r, sno) > 0
SQL> /
  MAX(SNO)
     54186... without the need for any Henry Winkler matching stuff (as we affectionately call it round here).