SQL Server: How do you remove punctuation from a field?

Question

Any one know a good way to remove punctuation from a field in SQL Server?

I\'m thinking

UPDATE tblMyTable SET FieldName = REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(FieldNa         


        

Answer 1

I took Ken MC's solution and made it into an function which can replace all punctuation with a given string:

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-- This function replaces all punctuation in the given string with the "replaceWith" string
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IF object_id('[dbo].[fnReplacePunctuation]') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
    DROP FUNCTION [dbo].[fnReplacePunctuation];
END;
GO
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[fnReplacePunctuation] (@string NVARCHAR(MAX), @replaceWith NVARCHAR(max))
RETURNS NVARCHAR(MAX)
BEGIN
    DECLARE @Result Varchar(max) = @string;
    DECLARE @BadChars Varchar(12) = '%[^a-z0-9]%'; -- to leave spaces - SELECT @BadChars = '%[^a-z0-9] %'
    DECLARE @p int = PatIndex(@BadChars,@Result);
    DECLARE @searchFrom INT;
    DECLARE @indexOfPunct INT = @p;

    WHILE @indexOfPunct > 0 BEGIN
      SET @searchFrom = LEN(@Result) - @p;
      SET @Result = Left(@Result, @p-1) + @replaceWith + Substring(@Result, @p+1,LEN(@Result));
      SET @IndexOfPunct = PatIndex(@BadChars, substring(@Result, (LEN(@Result) - @SearchFrom)+1, LEN(@Result)));
      SET @p = (LEN(@Result) - @searchFrom) + @indexOfPunct;
    END
    RETURN @Result;
END;
GO
-- example:
SELECT dbo.fnReplacePunctuation('This is, only, a tést-really..', '');

Output:

Thisisonlyatéstreally

Answer 2

If it's a one-off thing, I would use a C# + LINQ snippet in LINQPad to do the job with regular expressions.

It is quick and easy and you don't have to go through the process of setting up a CLR stored procedure and then cleaning up after yourself.