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Databases Reporting with SQL Working with Text Replacing Strings

how to replace a single piece of a randomly placed character in a substring.

How do I return a list of email addresses replacing the '@' with '<at>'.

2 Answers

Jennifer Nordell
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Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse Teacher

Hi there, John Richter! You would use the REPLACE function. The REPLACE function takes the column you want to look at, the string you want to replace, and the string you want to replace it with. They must be in that order.

The challenge is asking you to select the emails and replace the string '@' with the string '<at>' and then give it an alias of obfuscated_email. I'd be curious to know what you had originally tried. There may have just been a syntax error somewhere along the way.

SELECT REPLACE(email, '@', '<at>') AS obfuscated_email FROM customers;

The above line says select all emails but replace the "@" with "<at>" then give it the alias "obfuscated_email" and this is located in the customers table.

Hope this helps! :sparkles:

Jennifer Nordell , Here is what i had

SELECT * from customers REPLACE(email,'@','<at>') AS "obfuscated_email"; 

I'm still not quite sure why this wouldn't work.

Isn't this query asking - Return all customers, change the returned email with the following details?

Jennifer Nordell
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Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse Teacher

Hi, John Richter! I'm pretty sure that would result in an SQL error because the fields you're selecting must be specified before the table. Also, the challenge is asking for only the email column and you are selecting all columns. Also, the field name for the alias does not need quotation marks.

SELECT <columns> FROM table;

If you do * you're selecting all columns and wouldn't be able to specify an alias for any one of those individual columns.

Thank you for clarifying Jennifer!