How to strip all non-alphabetic characters from string in SQL Server?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1007697
-
06-07-2019 - |
italiano
english
français
española
中国
日本の
العربية
Deutsch
한국어
Português
RussianQuestion
How could you remove all characters that are not alphabetic from a string?
What about non-alphanumeric?
Does this have to be a custom function or are there also more generalizable solutions?
Solution
Try this function:
Create Function [dbo].[RemoveNonAlphaCharacters](@Temp VarChar(1000))
Returns VarChar(1000)
AS
Begin
Declare @KeepValues as varchar(50)
Set @KeepValues = '%[^a-z]%'
While PatIndex(@KeepValues, @Temp) > 0
Set @Temp = Stuff(@Temp, PatIndex(@KeepValues, @Temp), 1, '')
Return @Temp
End
Call it like this:
Select dbo.RemoveNonAlphaCharacters('abc1234def5678ghi90jkl')
Once you understand the code, you should see that it is relatively simple to change it to remove other characters, too. You could even make this dynamic enough to pass in your search pattern.
Hope it helps.
OTHER TIPS
Parameterized version of G Mastros' awesome answer:
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[fn_StripCharacters]
(
@String NVARCHAR(MAX),
@MatchExpression VARCHAR(255)
)
RETURNS NVARCHAR(MAX)
AS
BEGIN
SET @MatchExpression = '%['+@MatchExpression+']%'
WHILE PatIndex(@MatchExpression, @String) > 0
SET @String = Stuff(@String, PatIndex(@MatchExpression, @String), 1, '')
RETURN @String
END
Alphabetic only:
SELECT dbo.fn_StripCharacters('a1!s2@d3#f4$', '^a-z')
Numeric only:
SELECT dbo.fn_StripCharacters('a1!s2@d3#f4$', '^0-9')
Alphanumeric only:
SELECT dbo.fn_StripCharacters('a1!s2@d3#f4$', '^a-z0-9')
Non-alphanumeric:
SELECT dbo.fn_StripCharacters('a1!s2@d3#f4$', 'a-z0-9')
Believe it or not, in my system this ugly function performs better than G Mastros elegant one.
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.RemoveSpecialChar (@s VARCHAR(256))
RETURNS VARCHAR(256)
WITH SCHEMABINDING
BEGIN
IF @s IS NULL
RETURN NULL
DECLARE @s2 VARCHAR(256) = '',
@l INT = LEN(@s),
@p INT = 1
WHILE @p <= @l
BEGIN
DECLARE @c INT
SET @c = ASCII(SUBSTRING(@s, @p, 1))
IF @c BETWEEN 48 AND 57
OR @c BETWEEN 65 AND 90
OR @c BETWEEN 97 AND 122
SET @s2 = @s2 + CHAR(@c)
SET @p = @p + 1
END
IF LEN(@s2) = 0
RETURN NULL
RETURN @s2
I knew that SQL was bad at string manipulation, but I didn't think it would be this difficult. Here's a simple function to strip out all the numbers from a string. There would be better ways to do this, but this is a start.
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.AlphaOnly (
@String varchar(100)
)
RETURNS varchar(100)
AS BEGIN
RETURN (
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
@String,
'9', ''),
'8', ''),
'7', ''),
'6', ''),
'5', ''),
'4', ''),
'3', ''),
'2', ''),
'1', ''),
'0', '')
)
END
GO
-- ==================
DECLARE @t TABLE (
ColID int,
ColString varchar(50)
)
INSERT INTO @t VALUES (1, 'abc1234567890')
SELECT ColID, ColString, dbo.AlphaOnly(ColString)
FROM @t
Output
ColID ColString
----- ------------- ---
1 abc1234567890 abc
Round 2 - Data-Driven Blacklist
-- ============================================
-- Create a table of blacklist characters
-- ============================================
IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.tables WHERE [object_id] = OBJECT_ID('dbo.CharacterBlacklist'))
DROP TABLE dbo.CharacterBlacklist
GO
CREATE TABLE dbo.CharacterBlacklist (
CharID int IDENTITY,
DisallowedCharacter nchar(1) NOT NULL
)
GO
INSERT INTO dbo.CharacterBlacklist (DisallowedCharacter) VALUES (N'0')
INSERT INTO dbo.CharacterBlacklist (DisallowedCharacter) VALUES (N'1')
INSERT INTO dbo.CharacterBlacklist (DisallowedCharacter) VALUES (N'2')
INSERT INTO dbo.CharacterBlacklist (DisallowedCharacter) VALUES (N'3')
INSERT INTO dbo.CharacterBlacklist (DisallowedCharacter) VALUES (N'4')
INSERT INTO dbo.CharacterBlacklist (DisallowedCharacter) VALUES (N'5')
INSERT INTO dbo.CharacterBlacklist (DisallowedCharacter) VALUES (N'6')
INSERT INTO dbo.CharacterBlacklist (DisallowedCharacter) VALUES (N'7')
INSERT INTO dbo.CharacterBlacklist (DisallowedCharacter) VALUES (N'8')
INSERT INTO dbo.CharacterBlacklist (DisallowedCharacter) VALUES (N'9')
GO
-- ====================================
IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE [object_id] = OBJECT_ID('dbo.StripBlacklistCharacters'))
DROP FUNCTION dbo.StripBlacklistCharacters
GO
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.StripBlacklistCharacters (
@String nvarchar(100)
)
RETURNS varchar(100)
AS BEGIN
DECLARE @blacklistCt int
DECLARE @ct int
DECLARE @c nchar(1)
SELECT @blacklistCt = COUNT(*) FROM dbo.CharacterBlacklist
SET @ct = 0
WHILE @ct < @blacklistCt BEGIN
SET @ct = @ct + 1
SELECT @String = REPLACE(@String, DisallowedCharacter, N'')
FROM dbo.CharacterBlacklist
WHERE CharID = @ct
END
RETURN (@String)
END
GO
-- ====================================
DECLARE @s nvarchar(24)
SET @s = N'abc1234def5678ghi90jkl'
SELECT
@s AS OriginalString,
dbo.StripBlacklistCharacters(@s) AS ResultString
Output
OriginalString ResultString
------------------------ ------------
abc1234def5678ghi90jkl abcdefghijkl
My challenge to readers: Can you make this more efficient? What about using recursion?
If you are like me and don't have access to just add functions to your production data but still want to perform this kind of filtering, here's a pure SQL solution using a PIVOT table to put the filtered pieces back together again.
N.B. I hardcoded the table up to 40 characters, you'll have to add more if you have longer strings to filter.
SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL OFF;
with
ToBeScrubbed
as (
select 1 as id, '*SOME 222@ !@* #* BOGUS !@*&! DATA' as ColumnToScrub
),
Scrubbed as (
select
P.Number as ValueOrder,
isnull ( substring ( t.ColumnToScrub , number , 1 ) , '' ) as ScrubbedValue,
t.id
from
ToBeScrubbed t
left join master..spt_values P
on P.number between 1 and len(t.ColumnToScrub)
and type ='P'
where
PatIndex('%[^a-z]%', substring(t.ColumnToScrub,P.number,1) ) = 0
)
SELECT
id,
[1]+ [2]+ [3]+ [4]+ [5]+ [6]+ [7]+ [8] +[9] +[10]
+ [11]+ [12]+ [13]+ [14]+ [15]+ [16]+ [17]+ [18] +[19] +[20]
+ [21]+ [22]+ [23]+ [24]+ [25]+ [26]+ [27]+ [28] +[29] +[30]
+ [31]+ [32]+ [33]+ [34]+ [35]+ [36]+ [37]+ [38] +[39] +[40] as ScrubbedData
FROM (
select
*
from
Scrubbed
)
src
PIVOT (
MAX(ScrubbedValue) FOR ValueOrder IN (
[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10],
[11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20],
[21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30],
[31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40]
)
) pvt
Having looked at all the given solutions I thought that there has to be a pure SQL method that does not require a function or a CTE / XML query, and doesn't involve difficult to maintain nested REPLACE statements. Here is my solution:
SELECT
x
,CASE WHEN a NOT LIKE '%' + SUBSTRING(x, 1, 1) + '%' THEN '' ELSE SUBSTRING(x, 1, 1) END
+ CASE WHEN a NOT LIKE '%' + SUBSTRING(x, 2, 1) + '%' THEN '' ELSE SUBSTRING(x, 2, 1) END
+ CASE WHEN a NOT LIKE '%' + SUBSTRING(x, 3, 1) + '%' THEN '' ELSE SUBSTRING(x, 3, 1) END
+ CASE WHEN a NOT LIKE '%' + SUBSTRING(x, 4, 1) + '%' THEN '' ELSE SUBSTRING(x, 4, 1) END
+ CASE WHEN a NOT LIKE '%' + SUBSTRING(x, 5, 1) + '%' THEN '' ELSE SUBSTRING(x, 5, 1) END
+ CASE WHEN a NOT LIKE '%' + SUBSTRING(x, 6, 1) + '%' THEN '' ELSE SUBSTRING(x, 6, 1) END
-- Keep adding rows until you reach the column size
AS stripped_column
FROM (SELECT
column_to_strip AS x
,'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ' AS a
FROM my_table) a
The advantage of doing it this way is that the valid characters are contained in the one string in the sub query making easy to reconfigure for a different set of characters.
The downside is that you have to add a row of SQL for each character up to the size of your column. To make that task easier I just used the Powershell script below, this example if for a VARCHAR(64):
1..64 | % {
" + CASE WHEN a NOT LIKE '%' + SUBSTRING(x, {0}, 1) + '%' THEN '' ELSE SUBSTRING(x, {0}, 1) END" -f $_
} | clip.exe
Here is another way to remove non-alphabetic characters using an iTVF. First, you need a pattern-based string splitter. Here is one taken from Dwain Camp's article:
-- PatternSplitCM will split a string based on a pattern of the form
-- supported by LIKE and PATINDEX
--
-- Created by: Chris Morris 12-Oct-2012
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[PatternSplitCM]
(
@List VARCHAR(8000) = NULL
,@Pattern VARCHAR(50)
) RETURNS TABLE WITH SCHEMABINDING
AS
RETURN
WITH numbers AS (
SELECT TOP(ISNULL(DATALENGTH(@List), 0))
n = ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY (SELECT NULL))
FROM
(VALUES (0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0)) d (n),
(VALUES (0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0)) e (n),
(VALUES (0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0)) f (n),
(VALUES (0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0)) g (n)
)
SELECT
ItemNumber = ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY MIN(n)),
Item = SUBSTRING(@List,MIN(n),1+MAX(n)-MIN(n)),
[Matched]
FROM (
SELECT n, y.[Matched], Grouper = n - ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY y.[Matched],n)
FROM numbers
CROSS APPLY (
SELECT [Matched] = CASE WHEN SUBSTRING(@List,n,1) LIKE @Pattern THEN 1 ELSE 0 END
) y
) d
GROUP BY [Matched], Grouper
Now that you have a pattern-based splitter, you need to split the strings that match the pattern:
[a-z]
and then concatenate them back to get the desired result:
SELECT *
FROM tbl t
CROSS APPLY(
SELECT Item + ''
FROM dbo.PatternSplitCM(t.str, '[a-z]')
WHERE Matched = 1
ORDER BY ItemNumber
FOR XML PATH('')
) x (a)
Result:
| Id | str | a |
|----|------------------|----------------|
| 1 | test“te d'abc | testtedabc |
| 2 | anr¤a | anra |
| 3 | gs-re-C“te d'ab | gsreCtedab |
| 4 | M‚fe, DF | MfeDF |
| 5 | R™temd | Rtemd |
| 6 | ™jad”ji | jadji |
| 7 | Cje y ret¢n | Cjeyretn |
| 8 | J™kl™balu | Jklbalu |
| 9 | le“ne-iokd | leneiokd |
| 10 | liode-Pyr‚n‚ie | liodePyrnie |
| 11 | V„s G”ta | VsGta |
| 12 | Sƒo Paulo | SoPaulo |
| 13 | vAstra gAtaland | vAstragAtaland |
| 14 | ¥uble / Bio-Bio | ubleBioBio |
| 15 | U“pl™n/ds VAsb-y | UplndsVAsby |
This is a very clunky way to take all of the characters that you don't want out. Problem is you have to specify which characters you don't want. If a new character comes in you it will get through unless you add it to the list.
The upside is that you don't have to create a special function. I don't have write permissions so this enables me to run from a simple query.
REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(
p.Name
,'®','')
,'©','')
,'ö','o')
,'ë','e')
,'ä','a')
,'ü','u')
,'ú','u')
,'í','i')
,'ï','i')
,'™','')
,'é','e')
,'²','2')
,'è','e')
,'—','-')
,'–','-')
,'ó','o')
,'•',' ')
,'…','.')
,'ô','o')
,'â','a')
,'á','a')
,'ê','e')
,'è','e')
,'’',' ')
,'·',' ')
,'à','a')
,'å','a')
,'ã','a')
,'’',' ')
,'a€s','as')
,'ø','o')
,'ñ','n')
,'î','i')
,'ç','c')
,'Ç','C')
,'Ã','A')
,'”','"')
,'“','"')
,'Á','A')
,'¢','c')
,'Ã','A')
,'Å','A')
,'¶','S')
,'×','x')
,'†','')
,'š','')
,'¤','')
,'µ','')
,'õ','')
,'€','')
,'‘','')
,'Õ','')
,'ð','')
,'Ò','')
,'¨','')
,'º','')
,'°','')
,'ì','')
,'ƒ','')
,'ÿ','')
,'ß','')
,'«','')
,'»','')
,'Æ','')
,'¬','')
,'Ù','')
,'ý','')
,'û','')
,'|','')
as Name
This solution, inspired by Mr. Allen's solution, requires a Numbers table of integers (which you should have on hand if you want to do serious query operations with good performance). It does not require a CTE. You can change the NOT IN (...) expression to exclude specific characters, or change it to an IN (...) OR LIKE expression to retain only certain characters.
SELECT (
SELECT SUBSTRING([YourString], N, 1)
FROM dbo.Numbers
WHERE N > 0 AND N <= CONVERT(INT, LEN([YourString]))
AND SUBSTRING([YourString], N, 1) NOT IN ('(',')',',','.')
FOR XML PATH('')
) AS [YourStringTransformed]
FROM ...
Here's a solution that doesn't require creating a function or listing all instances of characters to replace. It uses a recursive WITH statement in combination with a PATINDEX to find unwanted chars. It will replace all unwanted chars in a column - up to 100 unique bad characters contained in any given string. (E.G. "ABC123DEF234" would contain 4 bad characters 1, 2, 3 and 4) The 100 limit is the maximum number of recursions allowed in a WITH statement, but this doesn't impose a limit on the number of rows to process, which is only limited by the memory available.
If you don't want DISTINCT results, you can remove the two options from the code.
-- Create some test data:
SELECT * INTO #testData
FROM (VALUES ('ABC DEF,K.l(p)'),('123H,J,234'),('ABCD EFG')) as t(TXT)
-- Actual query:
-- Remove non-alpha chars: '%[^A-Z]%'
-- Remove non-alphanumeric chars: '%[^A-Z0-9]%'
DECLARE @BadCharacterPattern VARCHAR(250) = '%[^A-Z]%';
WITH recurMain as (
SELECT DISTINCT CAST(TXT AS VARCHAR(250)) AS TXT, PATINDEX(@BadCharacterPattern, TXT) AS BadCharIndex
FROM #testData
UNION ALL
SELECT CAST(TXT AS VARCHAR(250)) AS TXT, PATINDEX(@BadCharacterPattern, TXT) AS BadCharIndex
FROM (
SELECT
CASE WHEN BadCharIndex > 0
THEN REPLACE(TXT, SUBSTRING(TXT, BadCharIndex, 1), '')
ELSE TXT
END AS TXT
FROM recurMain
WHERE BadCharIndex > 0
) badCharFinder
)
SELECT DISTINCT TXT
FROM recurMain
WHERE BadCharIndex = 0;
I put this in both places where PatIndex is called.
PatIndex('%[^A-Za-z0-9]%', @Temp)
for the custom function above RemoveNonAlphaCharacters and renamed it RemoveNonAlphaNumericCharacters
--First create one function
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[GetNumericonly]
(@strAlphaNumeric VARCHAR(256))
RETURNS VARCHAR(256)
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @intAlpha INT
SET @intAlpha = PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%', @strAlphaNumeric)
BEGIN
WHILE @intAlpha > 0
BEGIN
SET @strAlphaNumeric = STUFF(@strAlphaNumeric, @intAlpha, 1, '' )
SET @intAlpha = PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%', @strAlphaNumeric )
END
END
RETURN ISNULL(@strAlphaNumeric,0)
END
Now call this function like
select [dbo].[GetNumericonly]('Abhi12shek23jaiswal')
Its result like
1223
From performance perspective I'd use Inline Function:
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[udf_RemoveNumericCharsFromString]
(
@List NVARCHAR(4000)
)
RETURNS TABLE
AS RETURN
WITH GetNums AS (
SELECT TOP(ISNULL(DATALENGTH(@List), 0))
n = ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY (SELECT NULL))
FROM
(VALUES (0),(0),(0),(0)) d (n),
(VALUES (0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0)) e (n),
(VALUES (0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0)) f (n),
(VALUES (0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0),(0)) g (n)
)
SELECT StrOut = ''+
(SELECT Chr
FROM GetNums
CROSS APPLY (SELECT SUBSTRING(@List , n,1)) X(Chr)
WHERE Chr LIKE '%[^0-9]%'
ORDER BY N
FOR XML PATH (''),TYPE).value('.','NVARCHAR(MAX)')
/*How to Use
SELECT StrOut FROM dbo.udf_RemoveNumericCharsFromString ('vv45--9gut')
Result: vv--gut
*/
Here's another recursive CTE solution, based on @Gerhard Weiss's answer here. You should be able to copy and paste the whole code block into SSMS and play with it there. The results include a few extra columns to help us understand what's going on. It took me a while until I understood all that's going on with both PATINDEX (RegEx) and the recursive CTE.
DECLARE @DefineBadCharPattern varchar(30)
SET @DefineBadCharPattern = '%[^A-z]%' --Means anything NOT between A and z characters (according to ascii char value) is "bad"
SET @DefineBadCharPattern = '%[^a-z0-9]%' --Means anything NOT between a and z characters or numbers 0 through 9 (according to ascii char value) are "bad"
SET @DefineBadCharPattern = '%[^ -~]%' --Means anything NOT between space and ~ characters (all non-printable characters) is "bad"
--Change @ReplaceBadCharWith to '' to strip "bad" characters from string
--Change to some character if you want to 'see' what's being replaced. NOTE: It must be allowed accoring to @DefineBadCharPattern above
DECLARE @ReplaceBadCharWith varchar(1) = '#' --Change this to whatever you want to replace non-printable chars with
IF patindex(@DefineBadCharPattern COLLATE Latin1_General_BIN, @ReplaceBadCharWith) > 0
BEGIN
RAISERROR('@ReplaceBadCharWith value (%s) must be a character allowed by PATINDEX pattern of %s',16,1,@ReplaceBadCharWith, @DefineBadCharPattern)
RETURN
END
--A table of values to play with:
DECLARE @temp TABLE (OriginalString varchar(100))
INSERT @temp SELECT ' 1hello' + char(13) + char(10) + 'there' + char(30) + char(9) + char(13) + char(10)
INSERT @temp SELECT '2hello' + char(30) + 'there' + char(30)
INSERT @temp SELECT ' 3hello there'
INSERT @temp SELECT ' tab' + char(9) + ' character'
INSERT @temp SELECT 'good bye'
--Let the magic begin:
;WITH recurse AS (
select
OriginalString,
OriginalString as CleanString,
patindex(@DefineBadCharPattern COLLATE Latin1_General_BIN, OriginalString) as [Position],
substring(OriginalString,patindex(@DefineBadCharPattern COLLATE Latin1_General_BIN, OriginalString),1) as [InvalidCharacter],
ascii(substring(OriginalString,patindex(@DefineBadCharPattern COLLATE Latin1_General_BIN, OriginalString),1)) as [ASCIICode]
from @temp
UNION ALL
select
OriginalString,
CONVERT(varchar(100),REPLACE(CleanString,InvalidCharacter,@ReplaceBadCharWith)),
patindex(@DefineBadCharPattern COLLATE Latin1_General_BIN,CleanString) as [Position],
substring(CleanString,patindex(@DefineBadCharPattern COLLATE Latin1_General_BIN,CleanString),1),
ascii(substring(CleanString,patindex(@DefineBadCharPattern COLLATE Latin1_General_BIN,CleanString),1))
from recurse
where patindex(@DefineBadCharPattern COLLATE Latin1_General_BIN,CleanString) > 0
)
SELECT * FROM recurse
--optionally comment out this last WHERE clause to see more of what the recursion is doing:
WHERE patindex(@DefineBadCharPattern COLLATE Latin1_General_BIN,CleanString) = 0
Using a CTE generated numbers table to examine each character, then FOR XML to concat to a string of kept values you can...
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[PatRemove](
@pattern varchar(50),
@expression varchar(8000)
)
RETURNS varchar(8000)
AS
BEGIN
WITH
d(d) AS (SELECT d FROM (VALUES (0),(1),(2),(3),(4),(5),(6),(7),(8),(9)) digits(d)),
nums(n) AS (SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) FROM d d1, d d2, d d3, d d4),
chars(c) AS (SELECT SUBSTRING(@expression, n, 1) FROM nums WHERE n <= LEN(@expression))
SELECT
@expression = (SELECT c AS [text()] FROM chars WHERE c NOT LIKE @pattern FOR XML PATH(''));
RETURN @expression;
END
DECLARE @vchVAlue NVARCHAR(255) = 'SWP, Lettering Position 1: 4 Ω, 2: 8 Ω, 3: 16 Ω, 4: , 5: , 6: , Voltage Selector, Solder, 6, Step switch, : w/o fuseholder '
WHILE PATINDEX('%?%' , CAST(@vchVAlue AS VARCHAR(255))) > 0
BEGIN
SELECT @vchVAlue = STUFF(@vchVAlue,PATINDEX('%?%' , CAST(@vchVAlue AS VARCHAR(255))),1,' ')
END
SELECT @vchVAlue
this way didn't work for me as i was trying to keep the Arabic letters i tried to replace the regular expression but also it didn't work. i wrote another method to work on ASCII level as it was my only choice and it worked.
Create function [dbo].[RemoveNonAlphaCharacters] (@s varchar(4000)) returns varchar(4000)
with schemabinding
begin
if @s is null
return null
declare @s2 varchar(4000)
set @s2 = ''
declare @l int
set @l = len(@s)
declare @p int
set @p = 1
while @p <= @l begin
declare @c int
set @c = ascii(substring(@s, @p, 1))
if @c between 48 and 57 or @c between 65 and 90 or @c between 97 and 122 or @c between 165 and 253 or @c between 32 and 33
set @s2 = @s2 + char(@c)
set @p = @p + 1
end
if len(@s2) = 0
return null
return @s2
end
GO
Though post is a bit old, I would like to say the following. Issue I had with above solution is that it does not filter out characters like ç, ë, ï, etc. I adapted a function as follows (I only used an 80 varchar string to save memory):
create FUNCTION dbo.udf_Cleanchars (@InputString varchar(80))
RETURNS varchar(80)
AS
BEGIN
declare @return varchar(80) , @length int , @counter int , @cur_char char(1)
SET @return = ''
SET @length = 0
SET @counter = 1
SET @length = LEN(@InputString)
IF @length > 0
BEGIN WHILE @counter <= @length
BEGIN SET @cur_char = SUBSTRING(@InputString, @counter, 1) IF ((ascii(@cur_char) in (32,44,46)) or (ascii(@cur_char) between 48 and 57) or (ascii(@cur_char) between 65 and 90) or (ascii(@cur_char) between 97 and 122))
BEGIN SET @return = @return + @cur_char END
SET @counter = @counter + 1
END END
RETURN @return END
I just found this built into Oracle 10g if that is what you're using. I had to strip all the special characters out for a phone number compare.
regexp_replace(c.phone, '[^0-9]', '')
