Skip to main content

How to add quotes around a list of strings

I have been in the situation many times where I have got a long list of strings that either I need to insert into a table or use in a query. The trouble is they all need a comma and quotes around them so they can be used in SSMS. After much frustration I have come across a solution that works well for me - a macro in Notepad++ which will add the commas and quotes for me.

If you have a list of strings like:

master
model
msdb
db1
db2

And want to put quotes and commas around them all to include in a query so it looks like:

SELECT NAME
FROM sysdatabases
WHERE NAME NOT IN (
               'master'
              ,'model'
              ,'msdb'
              ,'db1'
              ,'db2'
              )

Then follow the steps below:
  • If you don't already have Notepad++ installed go here and install it
  • Run Notepad++ and paste your list of strings into the window. Next you need to record your macro in Notepad++:
    • Click at the beginning of line 1 or where the first string starts and either click on the relevant (play) button or choose Macro --> Start Recording then press the following keys:
    • comma(,)
    • single quote (') 
    • end 
    • comma(') 
    • down arrow 
    • home
    • Then from the menu choose Macro --> Save Current Recorded Macro As... and give your macro a name like Add Quotes.
Now you have recorded the macro it will only play once when you select it, which is not any good if you want to add commas and quotes to a list of many strings. So this is what you do: click at the beginning of the list like you did before but choose Macro --> Run a Macro Multiple Times... and you will see a messagebox similar to this:

Choose the macro from the list and choose Run until the end of the file and it should add quotes and commas around the strings. Some experimentation may be required but you'll work it out. It certainly save hammering away on the keyboard.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to configure the SSAS service to use a Domain Account

NB Updating SPNs in AD is not for the faint hearted plus I got inconsistent results from different servers. Do so at your own risk! If you need the SSAS account on a SQL Server to use a domain account rather than the local “virtual” account “NT Service\MSSQLServerOLAPService”. You may think you just give the account login permissions to the server, perhaps give it sysadmin SQL permissions too. However, if you try and connect to SSAS  remotely  you may get this error: Authentication failed. (Microsoft.AnalysisService.AdomdClient) The target principal name is incorrect (Microsoft.AnalysisService.AdomdClient) From Microsoft: “A Service Principle Name (SPN) uniquely identifies a service instance in an Active Directory domain when Kerberos is used to mutually authenticate client and service identities. An SPN is associated with the logon account under which the service instance runs. For client applications connecting to Analysis Services via Kerberos authentication, th

How to move the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) database to a different drive

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) is a very useful tool for scanning your network to find instances of SQL Server plus all manner of detailed information about the installed product, OS and hardware it sits on. <Click image to enbiggen> There is an issue with it the database it uses to store the data it collects, however. Assuming you don't have an instance called MAPS on your server, the product will install using LocalDB (a cut down version of SQL Server Express) and puts the databases on your C: drive. If you then scan a large network you could easily expand the database to 10GB which may cause issues on a server when that drive is often one of the smallest. However, there is a simple solution: connect to LocalDB using Management Studio, detach the databases, move to a different drive, set permissions on the new location if required and reattach the database. How do you connect to LocalDB? Here you go: Connect to (localdb)\MAPTOOLKIT The

SAN performance testing using SQLIO

Introduction This document describes how to use Microsoft’s SQLIO to test disk/SAN performance. It is biased towards SQL Server – which uses primarily 64KB and 8KB data pages so I am running the tests using those cluster sizes, however, other sizes can be specified.  Download SQLIO from https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=20163   SQLIO is a command line tool with no GUI so you need to open a command prompt at  C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO  after you have installed it. Configuration First of all edit param.txt so that you create the test file we will be using. The file needs to be bigger than the combined RAID and on-board disk caches. In this case we are using a 50GB file. The “ 2”  refers to the number of threads to use when testing, you don’t need to change this now. The “ 0x0”  value indicates that all CPUs should be used, which you probably don’t want to change either, “ #”  is a comment. The only part you may want to change is 51200 (50GB) a