Using split delimiter-separated lists in SQL Server

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This function is useful for splitting a string of values delimited by a special character; e.g., a comma. I recently had a case where the list of employees for a department needed to be inserted into a table. The employee names were in a string delimited by commas. Separating these names in Visual Basic and inserting them into the database involved many database hits. Instead, I passed the string to the following stored procedure. The stored procedure split the string and inserted each employee name along with department name into the database.

This script has been tested on SQL server 7.0. Note that it takes ' '(space) also as a delimiter.

CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.sp_Txt_Split(

    @sInputList varchar(8000) -- List of delimited items
  , @Delimiter char(1) = ',' -- delimiter that separates items
)

AS BEGIN

SET NOCOUNT ON

DECLARE @Item Varchar(8000)

CREATE TABLE #List(Item varchar(8000)) -- Create a temporary table

--IF CHARINDEX(@Delimiter,@sInputList,0) <> 0
--BEGIN
WHILE CHARINDEX(@Delimiter,@sInputList,0) <> 0
BEGIN
SELECT
@Item=RTRIM(LTRIM(SUBSTRING(@sInputList,1,CHARINDEX(@Delimiter,@sInputList,0
)-1))),
@sInputList=RTRIM(LTRIM(SUBSTRING(@sInputList,CHARINDEX(@Delimiter,@sInputLi
st,0)+1,LEN(@sInputList))))

IF LEN(@Item) > 0
INSERT INTO #List SELECT @Item

END
--END

IF LEN(@sInputList) > 0
INSERT INTO #List SELECT @sInputList -- Put the last item in

SELECT * FROM #List
DROP TABLE #List
RETURN
END
GO

To test the procedure:

EXEC sp_Txt_Split '1,22,333,444,,5555,666', ','

or

EXEC sp_Txt_Split '1#22#333#','#'

I decided to implement the process in this tip as a function.

The benefits of this method are that it doesn't use tempdb (so it won't be affected by anything that may lock tempdb), it is slightly faster, and you can use the function just like any other table -- for example, select c.* from customers c where c.city in (select item from fnSplit('Dallas,New York,Chicago',',') )

Here's the code:

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.fnSplit(
    @sInputList VARCHAR(8000) -- List of delimited items
  , @sDelimiter VARCHAR(8000) = ',' -- delimiter that separates items
) RETURNS @List TABLE (item VARCHAR(8000))

BEGIN
DECLARE @sItem VARCHAR(8000)
WHILE CHARINDEX(@sDelimiter,@sInputList,0) <> 0
 BEGIN
 SELECT
  @sItem=RTRIM(LTRIM(SUBSTRING(@sInputList,1,CHARINDEX(@sDelimiter,@sInputList,0)-1))),
  @sInputList=RTRIM(LTRIM(SUBSTRING(@sInputList,CHARINDEX(@sDelimiter,@sInputList,0)+LEN(@sDelimiter),LEN(@sInputList))))
 
 IF LEN(@sItem) > 0
  INSERT INTO @List SELECT @sItem
 END

IF LEN(@sInputList) > 0
 INSERT INTO @List SELECT @sInputList -- Put the last item in
RETURN
END
GO
--Test
select * from fnSplit('1,22,333,444,,5555,666', ',')
select * from fnSplit('1##22#333##444','##')  --note second item has embedded #
select * from fnSplit('1 22 333 444  5555 666', ' ')

—David B.

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