Question

Is there an elegant way in SQL Server to find all the distinct characters in a single varchar(50) column, across all rows?

Bonus points if it can be done without cursors 🙂

For example, say my data contains 3 rows:

productname
-----------
product1
widget2
nicknack3

The distinct inventory of characters would be “productwigenka123”

Answer 1

Given that your column is varchar, it means it can only store characters from codes 0 to 255, on whatever code page you have. If you only use the 32-128 ASCII code range, then you can simply see if you have any of the characters 32-128, one by one. The following query does that, looking in sys.objects.name:

with cteDigits as (
    select 0 as Number
    union all select 1 as Number
    union all select 2 as Number
    union all select 3 as Number
    union all select 4 as Number
    union all select 5 as Number
    union all select 6 as Number
    union all select 7 as Number
    union all select 8 as Number
    union all select 9 as Number)
, cteNumbers as (
    select U.Number + T.Number*10 + H.Number*100 as Number
    from cteDigits U
    cross join cteDigits T
    cross join cteDigits H)
, cteChars as (
    select CHAR(Number) as Char
    from cteNumbers 
    where Number between 32 and 128)
select cteChars.Char as [*]
from cteChars
cross apply (
    select top(1) *
    from sys.objects
    where CHARINDEX(cteChars.Char, name, 0) > 0) as o
for xml path('');