Question

Is there a smarter way to remove all special characters rather than having a series of about 15 nested replace statements?

The following works, but only handles three characters (ampersand, blank and period).

select CustomerID, CustomerName, 
   Replace(Replace(Replace(CustomerName,'&',''),' ',''),'.','') as CustomerNameStripped
from Customer 

Answer 1

One flexible-ish way;

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[fnRemovePatternFromString](@BUFFER VARCHAR(MAX), @PATTERN VARCHAR(128)) RETURNS VARCHAR(MAX) AS
BEGIN
    DECLARE @POS INT = PATINDEX(@PATTERN, @BUFFER)
    WHILE @POS > 0 BEGIN
        SET @BUFFER = STUFF(@BUFFER, @POS, 1, '')
        SET @POS = PATINDEX(@PATTERN, @BUFFER)
    END
    RETURN @BUFFER
END

select dbo.fnRemovePatternFromString('cake & beer $3.99!?c', '%[$&.!?]%')

(No column name)
cake  beer 399c