T-SQL Split Word into characters

Question

I have searched everywhere and I cannot find this implementation anywhere.

Let\'s say I have the word: QWERTY

I want to obtain this table:

Answer 1

Please, PLEASE avoid referencing systems tables, specifically system tables in system databases. In fact, the selected answer above probably won't compile in a Visual Studio 2013 Database Project

Table variables are fine, but recursion with a CTE is the answer:

DECLARE @str VARCHAR(max)
SET @str = 'QWERTY AnotherWord'
WITH Split(stpos,endpos)
AS(
SELECT 1 AS stpos, 2 AS endpos
UNION ALL
SELECT endpos, endpos+1
FROM Split
WHERE endpos <= LEN(@str)
)
SELECT 
    'character' = SUBSTRING(@str,stpos,COALESCE(NULLIF(endpos,0),LEN(@str)+1)-stpos)
   ,'charindex' = stpos
FROM Split

That said, the use for the code above is to get a table full of letters representing different permissions for a user. That is not the way to do this. Make a table with an ID, a permission code and a description then make a linking table between the users table and the new permissions table. this gives you the same abilities and doesn't make you solve dumb problems like this.

Answer 2

Here is a table-valued function (derived from aF's temp table implementation). It differs slightly from aF's implementation in that it starts with @count=1; this excludes an extraneous leading space.

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[Chars] (@string VARCHAR(max)) 
RETURNS @chars TABLE (character CHAR) 
AS 
  BEGIN 
      DECLARE @count INT, 
              @total INT 

      SELECT @total = Len(@string), 
             @count = 1 

      WHILE @count <= @total 
        BEGIN 
            INSERT INTO @chars 
            SELECT Substring(@string, @count, 1) 

            SELECT @count = @count + 1 
        END 

      RETURN 
  END 

Usage:

SELECT * FROM dbo.chars('QWERTY AnotherWord')

Answer 3

Declare @word nvarchar(max)
Select @word = 'Hello This is the test';

with cte (Number)as 
(Select 1
union all 
select Number +1 From cte  where number <len(@word)
)
select * from Cte Cross apply (Select SUBSTRING(@word,number,1 ) ) as J(Letter)

Answer 4

Do it like this:

select substring(a.b, v.number+1, 1) 
from (select 'QWERTY AnotherWord' b) a
join master..spt_values v on v.number < len(a.b)
where v.type = 'P'

Answer 5

Here you have it:

create table #words (
  character varchar(1)
)

declare @test varchar(10)
select @test = 'QWERTY'

declare @count int, @total int
select @total = len(@test), @count = 0

while @count <= @total
begin
  insert into #words select substring(@test, @count, 1)
  select @count = @count + 1
end

select * from #words

drop table #words