selecting first alphabet in the string

[jamiljarrar1]

how can i make the select query to get the first alphabet in the string. for example my string look like as

"#@$%/;Please Help me"

i want to get the first alphabet 'P'. I dont want any thing before 'P'.

Advance Thanks for your help

 

[PWise]

Try this for starters

CREATE TABLE [Digits] (
    [DigitID] [int] NOT NULL ,
    CONSTRAINT [PK_Digits] PRIMARY KEY  CLUSTERED 
    (
        [DigitID]
    )  ON [PRIMARY] 
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
DECLARE @position int
SET @position = 1
WHILE @position <= 1000
BEGIN
   insert into Digits(DigitID) values (@position)
   SET @position = @position + 1
END
go

declare @s varchar(500)
select @S='#@$%/;Please Help me" '

Select Charindex(Char(digitid),@s),digitid,Char(digitid)
from Digits
where (digitid between 65 and 90 or digitid between 97 and 122) and  Charindex(Char(digitid),@s)>0
order by Charindex(Char(digitid),@s)

 

[PWise]

or this

CREATE TABLE [Digits] (
    [DigitID] [int] NOT NULL ,
    CONSTRAINT [PK_Digits] PRIMARY KEY  CLUSTERED 
    (
        [DigitID]
    )  ON [PRIMARY] 
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
DECLARE @position int
SET @position = 1
WHILE @position <= 1000
BEGIN
   insert into Digits(DigitID) values (@position)
   SET @position = @position + 1
END
go
declare @s varchar(500)
select @S='#@$%/;Please Help me" '

Select Substring(@s,digitid,1),Ascii(Substring(@s,digitid,1)),digitid
from Digits
where (Ascii(Substring(@s,digitid,1)) between 65 and 90 or Ascii(Substring(@s,digitid,1)) between 97 and 122)

 

[jamiljarrar1]

thanks pwise for your kind reply.
actually i have a table for voting
messages(messageid(int),message(varchar))
data in the table is as follows

messageid message
========= =======
1 v jameel
2 vjohn
3 /vjohn
4 @Vjameel
5 %sjohn
============================
i want to fetch only that rows whos first alphabet is v ommitting anything(special characters,numeric values) before that message
hope that this will clear my question

Thanks

 

[ismotuononen]

select * from tablename where substring(message, PATINDEX ('%[a-zA-Z]%',message),1) = 'v'

is that what You are looking for?