should u choose regular expressions route for this task, then match <..> substrings with

<[^<>]*>

and then replace the matches with

[empty string]

thus eliminating them from the original string

your task text violates the rule by which a table [your output table in this case] must have columns with unique names. U have ColD repeated twice. U need to re-think the task...

being the official RegEx Junkie

of the forum, i'll post regular expression's solution for

this cleaning...

sorry, wasn't attentive enough..yes your function does the same thing..

i'd just delete everything that is in between the tags <.....>, ending up with the targeted text. One function call would do it.

waht if 'or' is at the start or  end of a tested str? then u'll need more 'additional logic' I guess.

taking your target str 'or' as an example, what u r looking here is the occurrences of the string in the form of a 'stand-alone' word i.e. speaking in regular...

if u can spare a min pls explain why it is relevant that the column is inserted *in the middle of the table*. whay is it important?

just run a simple *insert into * in a strore precedure - got no errors

ALTER

PROCEDURE [dbo].[sp1]

AS

BEGIN