Question

Sample items in table1 

table1.productname 
Moshi Monsters 7-in-1 Accessory Pack - Poppet 
Mario vs. Donkey Kong Mini-Land Mayhem! 

I would like to replace ‘- . !’ from all the productname but using

select case
        when CHARINDEX ('-',[productname])>0 then REPLACE (ProductName ,'-',' ')
        when CHARINDEX ('!',[productname])>0 then REPLACE (ProductName ,'!','') 
        when CHARINDEX ('.',[productname])>0 then REPLACE (ProductName ,'.','') 
       else productname
       end as productname 
   from table1

seems to replace only -

output

Moshi Monsters 7 in 1 Accessory Pack   Poppet 
Mario vs. Donkey Kong Mini-Land Mayhem 

expected output 
Moshi Monsters 7 in 1 Accessory Pack   Poppet 
Mario vs Donkey Kong MiniLand Mayhem

How shall I approach for solution of this, I have multiple characters in the productname to replace such as in example and more and the column is around 5k big.
actually I wanted to update the table1 with the changed name but wanted to see which are changed and how before I update. It seems all the requirement is not fulfilled with this kind of replace statement.
Seems it could be done with multiple iterations in update but do not know how to use the iteration in update. How shall I process ahead?

Answer 1

You’re always using the SAME source for your string replacements: the original ProductName field, which does not change. You need to chain the replacements:

REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(ProductName, '.', ''), '!', ''), '-', '')

which gets hideously ugly very fast. You’d be better off doing this in your client.