Replace with wildcard, in SQL

Question

I know MS T-SQL does not support regular expression, but I need similar functionality. Here\'s what I\'m trying to do:

I have a varchar table field which stores a b

Answer 1

I think your best bet is going to be to use a recursive user-defined function (UDF). I've included some code here that you can use to pass in a string to achieve the results you're looking for.

CREATE FUNCTION ufn_StripIDsFromBreadcrumb (@cIndex int, @breadcrumb varchar(max), @theString varchar(max))

RETURNS varchar(max)

AS

BEGIN
DECLARE @nextColon int
DECLARE @nextSlash int

SET @nextColon = CHARINDEX(':', @theString, @cIndex)
SET @nextSlash = CHARINDEX('/', @theString, @nextColon)
SET @breadcrumb = @breadcrumb + SUBSTRING(@theString, @nextColon + 1, @nextSlash - @nextColon)

IF @nextSlash != LEN(@theString)

     BEGIN
     exec @breadcrumb = ufn_StripIDsFromBreadcrumb @cIndex =  @nextSlash, @breadcrumb = @breadcrumb, @theString = @theString
     END
RETURN @breadcrumb
END

---

You could then execute it with:

DECLARE @myString varchar(max)
EXEC @myString = ufn_StripIDsFromBreadcrumb 1, '/', '/ID1:Category1/ID2:Category2/ID3:Category3/'
PRINT @myString