Sql server® 2012 t-sql fundamentals

 

CHAPTER 2

 

Single-Table Queries

 

 71

The 

FORMAT

 Function

The FORMAT function allows you to format an input value as a character string based on a Microsoft 

.NET format string and an optional culture.

Syntax

FORMAT(input , format_string, culture)

There are numerous possibilities for formatting inputs using both standard and custom format 

strings. The MSDN article at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=211776 provides more informa-

tion. But just as a simple example, recall the convoluted expression used earlier to format a number 

as a 10-digit string with leading zeros. By using FORMAT, you can achieve the same task with either 

the custom form string ‘0000000000’ or the standard one, ‘d10’. As an example, the following code 

returns ‘0000001759’.

SELECT FORMAT(1759, '000000000');