Hi Wolfgang,
Regarding: "...thank you very much for your reply. But is there no command
within sqlite to do this? In my case, only substrings of the cells of one
column need to be changed!"
Sqlite was designed as a small SQL library -- extremely small, considering
its capabilities -- implementing most of the SQL92 standard.
The SQL commands are designed to store and retrieve data.
The idea is that one incorporates this library into one's own program, using
a compatible programming language of one's choice. Using your chosen
programming language, you perform the sorts of data transformations you
write about.
So I don't think many would think it a shortcoming of sqlite that it doesn't
provide general programming capabilities, but rather that it avoids
*duplication* by *not* including such things.
Not only can you include sqlite in a program written in C, perl, VB, etc.,
but you can link an sqlite database to Open Office or Microsoft Access as
"front ends" to your database in order to manipulate data.
Note that there is ALSO an sqlite command line *utility*, which is a useful
program allowing one to enter sqlite commands without writing a program or
linking another "front end", but it's not intended to be a general data
manipulation package.
That being said, you may want to be sure to look at page:
http://www.sqlite.org/lang_expr.html
including the "substr()" and concatenate expressions. The "regex()"
function is not included in the command-line utility, but you can link in
one of your choice.
Sqlite also allows you to define your own SQL-callable functions within your
program.
