Better techniques for trimming leading zeros in SQL Server?

replace(ltrim(replace(Fieldname.TableName, '0', '')), '', '0')

The suggestion from Thomas G worked for our needs.

The field in our case was already string and only the leading zeros needed to be trimmed. Mostly it's all numeric but sometimes there are letters so the previous INT conversion would crash.

SELECT CAST(CAST('000000000' AS INTEGER) AS VARCHAR)

This has a limit on the length of the string that can be converted to an INT

If you do not want to convert into int, I prefer this below logic because it can handle nulls
IFNULL(field,LTRIM(field,'0'))

If you are using Snowflake SQL, might use this:

ltrim(str_col,'0')

The ltrim function removes all instances of the designated set of characters from the left side.

So ltrim(str_col,'0') on '00000008A' would return '8A'

And rtrim(str_col,'0.') on '$125.00' would return '$125'

``` lang-sql
SUBSTRING(str_col, IIF(LEN(str_col) > 0, PATINDEX('%[^0]%', LEFT(str_col, LEN(str_col) - 1) + '.'), 0), LEN(str_col))
```

Works fine even with '0', '00' and so on.

In MySQL you can do this...

Trim(Leading '0' from your_column)

For converting number as **varchar** to **int**, you could also use simple

```
(column + 0)
```

This might help

SELECT ABS(column_name) FROM [db].[schema].[table]

Very easy way, when you just work with numeric values:

SELECT
TRY_CONVERT(INT, '000053830')

[Starting with SQL Server 2022 (16.x) you can do this][1]

```TRIM ( [ LEADING | TRAILING | BOTH ] [characters FROM ] string )```


[1]:

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