Friday, July 18, 2014

Remove alpha characters from string using SQL

If you have a string that has both numbers and alpha characters in it and want to remove all letters A-Z then this is a simple function that you can use on a column in SQL Server.


create function RemoveAlphas(@Text as nvarchar(255))
returns nvarchar(255)
as
BEGIN
Declare @Result as nvarchar(255)
Set @Result = @Text
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'A', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'B', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'C', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'D', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'E', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'F', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'G', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'H', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'I', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'J', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'K', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'L', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'M', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'N', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'O', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'P', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'Q', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'R', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'S', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'T', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'U', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'V', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'W', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'X', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'Y', '')
Set @Result = Replace(@Result, 'Z', '')
return @Result
END

Usage:

select dbo.RemoveAlphas('123abc456DEF')

Returns 123456

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