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sql-servervarchar

How do I count the number of paragraphs in a SQL text column?

I have a column called description with a datatype of varchar(MAX).

I would like to know how many paragraphs are in each description. How could I do this? I have tried:

select
    len(description) - len(REPLACE(description, '\n', '')) as numParagraphs

but it keeps returning 0 paragraphs. Any advice?

I realized a way to do it... 

select len(description) - len(replace(REPLACE(description, '.<br/>', 
''),'. <br/>','')),

Not perfect due to spacing but almost there. For some reason our delimiters are <br/>

Solution

  • How to count paragraphs, you already know. You seem to be looking for possibilities of what constitutes a new paragraph, yet you don't want to or cannot examine your data in its natural output habitat.

    Oh well, possibilities game started:

    • '\n'
    • '\r'
    • '\r\n'
    • '<br/>'
    • CHAR(13)
    • CHAR(10)
    • CHAR(13) + CHAR(10)