REPLACE (Transact-SQL)
Replaces all occurrences of a specified string value with another string value.
Syntax
REPLACE (string_expression,string_pattern,string_replacement)
Arguments
string_expression
Is the string expression to be searched. string_expression can be of a character or binary data type.string_pattern
Is the substring to be found. string_pattern can be of a character or binary data type. string_pattern cannot be an empty string ('').string_replacement
Is the replacement string. string_replacement can be of a character or binary data type.
Return Types
Returns nvarchar if one of the input arguments is of the nvarchar data type; otherwise, REPLACE returns varchar.
Returns NULL if any one of the arguments is NULL.
Remarks
REPLACE performs comparisons based on the collation of the input. To perform a comparison in a specified collation, you can use COLLATE to apply an explicit collation to the input.
Examples
The following example replaces the string cde in abcdefghi with xxx.
SELECT REPLACE('abcdefghicde','cde','xxx');
GO
Here is the result set.
------------
abxxxfghixxx
(1 row(s) affected)
The following example uses the COLLATE function.
SELECT REPLACE('Das ist ein Test' COLLATE Latin1_General_BIN,
'Test', 'desk' );
GO
Here is the result set.
------------
Das ist ein desk
(1 row(s) affected)