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'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;

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

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