What is the MySQL query equivalent of PHP strip_tags?

Question

I have a large database which contains records that have tags in them and I would like to remove them. Of course there is the method where I create a

Answer 1

Here you go:

CREATE FUNCTION `strip_tags`($str text) RETURNS text
BEGIN
    DECLARE $start, $end INT DEFAULT 1;
    LOOP
        SET $start = LOCATE("<", $str, $start);
        IF (!$start) THEN RETURN $str; END IF;
        SET $end = LOCATE(">", $str, $start);
        IF (!$end) THEN SET $end = $start; END IF;
        SET $str = INSERT($str, $start, $end - $start + 1, "");
    END LOOP;
END;

I made sure it removes mismatched opening brackets because they're dangerous, though it ignores any unpaired closing brackets because they're harmless.

mysql> select strip_tags('hello wo<>rld <again<.');
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| strip_tags('hello wo<>rld <again<.') |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| hello world again.                                                   |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set