How Can I Efficiently Replace Substrings Within a Column in SQL Server?

Perform string replacement in SQL Server table column

When working with large data sets, it is often necessary to modify specific parts of column values, which may include replacing certain strings with new strings. For SQL Server tables, the REPLACE() function provides a simple and efficient way to perform such string replacements.

Question:

Suppose a table contains a column containing a path that needs to be partially modified. The task is to change a specific substring in all records of that column while keeping the rest of the path unchanged.

Solution:

SQL Server’s REPLACE() function is designed for this purpose. It accepts three parameters:

1. Target column to be modified
2. The substring to replace
3. Replace string

To replace part of a path, you can use the following update statement:

UPDATE my_table
SET path = REPLACE(path, 'oldstring', 'newstring')

Usage:

• my_table: Name of table containing columns with paths
• path: The name of the column containing the path
• oldstring: The substring to replace
• newstring: Replace string

For example, if column "path" contains the following values:

<code>/data/folder1/subfolder1/file1.txt
/data/folder2/subfolder2/file2.txt
/data/folder3/subfolder3/file3.txt</code>

And we want to replace the string "folder2" with "newfolder2", then the following update statement will achieve this:

UPDATE my_table
SET path = REPLACE(path, 'folder2', 'newfolder2')

After executing this statement, the updated value in the "path" column will be:

<code>/data/folder1/subfolder1/file1.txt
/data/newfolder2/subfolder2/file2.txt
/data/folder3/subfolder3/file3.txt</code>

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