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Remove Special Characters from String and Convert to Multiple Columns by using ParseName Function

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Problem:
Sometime we get the data in one column with some kind of delimiter( such as comma,pipe, space etc) and also this string contains some special characters such as (.,./,$,#,@ etc).
The current problem is related to the string that has space separator and some special characters. Our goal is to split this string into FirstName, MiddleName and Last Name.

Solutions:
--Create Test Table

Create table dbo.ColSplit ( FullName Varchar(300))
go
insert into dbo.ColSplit values ( 'CHARLES. ROSAMILIA.')
go
insert into dbo.ColSplit values ( 'CHARLES. .cc ROSAMILIA. @')
go
insert into dbo.ColSplit values ( 'CHARLES. HANS. ROSAMILIA /')
go
insert into dbo.ColSplit values ( 'CHARLES ROSAMILIA')
go

Select * from Dbo.ColSplit

--This function removes special characters from string. The code is available on below link

http://www.tainyan.com/codesnippets/entry-63/sql-function-to-remove-special-characters.html

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[ufn_RemoveSpecialChars]
(
    @Input VARCHAR(MAX)
)
RETURNS VARCHAR(MAX)
BEGIN
   
   DECLARE @Output VARCHAR(MAX  )
   
   IF (ISNULL(@Input,'')='')
      SET @Output = @Input
   ELSE
   BEGIN
   
    DECLARE @Len INT
    DECLARE @Counter INT
    DECLARE @CharCode INT
        
    SET @Output = ''
    SET @Len = LEN(@Input)
   
   SET @Counter = 1
   
       WHILE @Counter <= @Len
       BEGIN
          
          SET @CharCode = ASCII(SUBSTRING(@Input, @Counter, 1))
          IF @CharCode=32 OR @CharCode BETWEEN 48 and 57 OR @CharCode BETWEEN 65 AND 90 OR @CharCode BETWEEN 97 AND 122
             SET @Output = @Output + CHAR(@CharCode)
             
          SET @Counter = @Counter + 1
          
       END
         
   END
      
   RETURN @Output
   
END



--Final Query
--Used function to remove special characters.
--Used ParseName builtin function to split the FullName depending upon ''( space).
--Wrote Case Statement to adjust middle name to last name where there is no last name.

;WITH CTE
     AS (SELECT Reverse(Parsename(Replace(
Reverse(dbo.[Ufn_removespecialchars](FullName)), ' ', '.'), 1)) AS [FirstName],
                Reverse(Parsename(Replace(Reverse(dbo.[Ufn_removespecialchars](FullName)), ' ', '.'), 2)) AS [MiddleName],
                Reverse(Parsename(Replace(Reverse(dbo.[Ufn_removespecialchars](FullName)), ' ', '.'), 3)) AS [LastName]
         FROM   dbo.ColSplit)
SELECT FirstName,
       CASE
         WHEN LastName IS NULL THEN NULL
         ELSE MiddleName
       END AS MiddleName,
       CASE
         WHEN LastName IS NULL
              AND MiddleName IS NOT NULL THEN MiddleName
         ELSE LastName
       END AS LastName
FROM   CTE

The above query can be changed according to the requirement. We can also write a user function to split string string into multiple columns. Here we were required to split FirstName,MiddleName and LastName and that can be handled with built in function.

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