removing all but alphanumeric characters from strings

I'm cleaning dirty data. One of the tasks is to remove any characters that
aren't alpha or numeric from a string. Can I use the replace function with a
character expression? I tried replace(@.dirtystring, '[^0-9a-zA-Z]', '') and
it didn't replace anything... any ideas?
here's a good link
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=steve+kass+John!Wa43yn&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=microsoft.public.sqlserver.programming&sel m=3CE46DFB.E728741%40drew.edu&rnum=2
your question is probably better suited for the .programming group over the
..server group.
hth,
Eric
Ann Queue wrote:
> I'm cleaning dirty data. One of the tasks is to remove any
> characters that aren't alpha or numeric from a string. Can I use the
> replace function with a character expression? I tried
> replace(@.dirtystring, '[^0-9a-zA-Z]', '') and it didn't replace
> anything... any ideas?
|||http://www.nigelrivett.net/RemoveNon...haracters.html
"Ann Queue" wrote:

> I'm cleaning dirty data. One of the tasks is to remove any characters that
> aren't alpha or numeric from a string. Can I use the replace function with a
> character expression? I tried replace(@.dirtystring, '[^0-9a-zA-Z]', '') and
> it didn't replace anything... any ideas?