How to return first few characters in a string by trimming last 8? (SQL Server 2008)

Question

I have a bunch of strings like this:

 'ABCD99991000'
 'XYZ79991000'
 'E2493991039'

What I really care about is everything before the last 8 characters. The problem is that the characters I care about at the start of the string are of variable length. In the above examples, what I'd want to return is:

 'ABCD'
 'XYZ'
 'E24'

The RIGHT() function would be perfect if I could get it to return everything BEFORE the results. For example, RIGHT(E2499991039,8) returns the numbers I don't want! How can I return the variable length strength before the last 8 characters in my query?

SQL Server 2008

Solution 1

See SUBSTRING

select substring(column_name, 1, len(column_name)-8)
from table_name

Solution 2

declare @str varchar(50)

set @str = 'ABCD99991000'

select LEFT(@str, len(@str) - 8)

(No error checking for Len(@str) < 8)

so,

select LEFT(colname, LEN(colname) - 8) 
from table_name 

Solution 3

BEGIN
declare @s varchar(16)
select @s = 'abcdefghij'
--
SELECT LEFT(@s, LEN(@s) - 8)
END

Solution 4

LEFT(E2499991039,LEN(E2499991039)-8) 

Solution 5

Left(column, length(column - 8))

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