How to strip all non-alphabetic characters from string in SQL Server?

Question

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

Answer 1

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?