Question

What is the best way to replace all ‘&lt’ with < in a given database column? Basically perform s/&lt[^;]/</gi

Notes:

• must work in MS SQL Server 2000
• Must be repeatable (and not end up with <;;;;;;;;;)

Answer 1

Some hacking required but we can do this with LIKE, PATINDEX, LEFT AND RIGHT and good old string concatenation.

create table test (     id int identity(1, 1) not null,     val varchar(25) not null )  insert into test values ('&lt; <- ok, &lt <- nok')  while 1 = 1 begin     update test         set val = left(val, patindex('%&lt[^;]%', val) - 1) +                       '&lt;' +                       right(val, len(val) - patindex('%&lt[^;]%', val) - 2)     from test     where val like '%&lt[^;]%'      IF @@ROWCOUNT = 0 BREAK end  select * from test 

Better is that this is SQL Server version agnostic and should work just fine.