How to remove special characters like ~,? from column value in a string

• bpsavi123

  SSC-Addicted

  Points: 499

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  May 16, 2015 at 6:33 am

  #317505

  I want to remove special characters from a string in sql like <?> in a column value in a table.

• Alan Burstein

  SSC Guru

  Points: 61141

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  May 16, 2015 at 10:58 am

  #1798428

  This is a job for patexclude8K.

  CREATE FUNCTION dbo.PatExclude8K

  (

  @String VARCHAR(8000),

  @Pattern VARCHAR(50)

  )

  /*******************************************************************************

  Purpose:

  Given a string (@String) and a pattern (@Pattern) of characters to remove,

  remove the patterned characters from the string.

  Usage:

  --===== Basic Syntax Example

  SELECT CleanedString

  FROM dbo.PatExclude8K(@String,@Pattern);

  --===== Remove all but Alpha characters

  SELECT CleanedString

  FROM dbo.SomeTable st

  CROSS APPLY dbo.PatExclude8K(st.SomeString,'%[^A-Za-z]%');

  --===== Remove all but Numeric digits

  SELECT CleanedString

  FROM dbo.SomeTable st

  CROSS APPLY dbo.PatExclude8K(st.SomeString,'%[^0-9]%');

  Programmer Notes:

  1. @Pattern is not case sensitive (the function can be easily modified to make it so)

  2. There is no need to include the "%" before and/or after your pattern since since we

  are evaluating each character individually

  Revision History:

  Rev 00 - 10/27/2014 Initial Development - Alan Burstein

  Rev 01 - 10/29/2014 Mar 2007 - Alan Burstein

  - Redesigned based on the dbo.STRIP_NUM_EE by Eirikur Eiriksson

  (see: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1585850-391-2.aspx)

  - change how the cte tally table is created

  - put the include/exclude logic in a CASE statement instead of a WHERE clause

  - Added Latin1_General_BIN Colation

  - Add code to use the pattern as a parameter.

  Rev 02- 11/6/2014

  - Added final performane enhancement (more cudo's to Eirikur Eiriksson)

  - Put 0 = PATINDEX filter logic into the WHERE clause

  Rev 03 - 5/16/2015

  - Updated code to deal with special XML characters

  *******************************************************************************/

  RETURNS TABLE WITH SCHEMABINDING AS

  RETURN

  WITH

  E1(N) AS (SELECT N FROM (VALUES (NULL),(NULL),(NULL),(NULL),(NULL),(NULL),(NULL),(NULL),(NULL),(NULL)) AS X(N)),

  itally(N) AS

  (

  SELECT TOP(CONVERT(INT,LEN(@String),0)) ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL))

  FROM E1 T1 CROSS JOIN E1 T2 CROSS JOIN E1 T3 CROSS JOIN E1 T4

  )

  SELECT NewString =

  ((

  SELECT SUBSTRING(@String,N,1)

  FROM iTally

  WHERE 0 = PATINDEX(@Pattern,SUBSTRING(@String COLLATE Latin1_General_BIN,N,1))

  FOR XML PATH(''),TYPE

  ).value('.[1]','varchar(8000)'));

  GO

  Example of how you would remove <?> from your string:

  DECLARE @table TABLE (string varchar(100));

  INSERT @table VALUES ('<string1?>'),('string2???'),('<?>string??>3');

  SELECT oldstring = string, newstring

  FROM @table t

  CROSS APPLY dbo.patexclude8k(t.string,'[<?>]');

  Results:

  oldstring newstring

  -------------------- ----------

  <string1?> string1

  string2??? string2

  <?>string??>3 string3

  Edit: added results

  "I cant stress enough the importance of switching from a sequential files mindset to set-based thinking. After you make the switch, you can spend your time tuning and optimizing your queries instead of maintaining lengthy, poor-performing code."

  -- Itzik Ben-Gan 2001