REPLICATE (Transact-SQL)

Article
05/16/2013

Repeats a string value a specified number of times.

Topic link icon Transact-SQL Syntax Conventions

Syntax

REPLICATE ( string_expression ,integer_expression )

Arguments

string_expression
Is an expression of a character string or binary data type. string_expression can be either character or binary data.

Note

If string_expression is not of type varchar(max) or nvarchar(max), REPLICATE truncates the return value at 8,000 bytes. To return values greater than 8,000 bytes, string_expression must be explicitly cast to the appropriate large-value data type.
integer_expression
Is an expression of any integer type, including bigint. If integer_expression is negative, NULL is returned.

Return Types

Returns the same type as string_expression.

Examples

A. Using REPLICATE

The following example replicates a 0 character four times in front of a production line code in the AdventureWorks2012 database.

USE AdventureWorks2012;
GO
SELECT [Name]
, REPLICATE('0', 4) + [ProductLine] AS 'Line Code'
FROM [Production].[Product]
WHERE [ProductLine] = 'T'
ORDER BY [Name];
GO

Here is the result set.

Name                                               Line Code
-------------------------------------------------- ---------
HL Touring Frame - Blue, 46                        0000T 
HL Touring Frame - Blue, 50                        0000T 
HL Touring Frame - Blue, 54                        0000T 
HL Touring Frame - Blue, 60                        0000T 
HL Touring Frame - Yellow, 46                      0000T 
HL Touring Frame - Yellow, 50                      0000T
...

B. Using REPLICATE and DATALENGTH

The following example left pads numbers to a specified length as they are converted from a numeric data type to character or Unicode.

USE AdventureWorks2012;
GO
IF EXISTS(SELECT name FROM sys.tables
      WHERE name = 't1')
   DROP TABLE t1;
GO
CREATE TABLE t1 
(
 c1 varchar(3),
 c2 char(3)
);
GO
INSERT INTO t1 VALUES ('2', '2'), ('37', '37'),('597', '597');
GO
SELECT REPLICATE('0', 3 - DATALENGTH(c1)) + c1 AS 'Varchar Column',
       REPLICATE('0', 3 - DATALENGTH(c2)) + c2 AS 'Char Column'
FROM t1;
GO

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