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

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')