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

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)

---

SAMPLE

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 |