SQL Server Regular expressions in T-SQL

Solution 1:

How about the PATINDEX function?

The pattern matching in TSQL is not a complete regex library, but it gives you the basics.

(From Books Online)

Wildcard  Meaning  
% Any string of zero or more characters.

_ Any single character.

[ ] Any single character within the specified range 
    (for example, [a-f]) or set (for example, [abcdef]).

[^] Any single character not within the specified range 
    (for example, [^a - f]) or set (for example, [^abcdef]).

Solution 2:

If anybody is interested in using regex with CLR here is a solution. The function below (C# .net 4.5) returns a 1 if the pattern is matched and a 0 if the pattern is not matched. I use it to tag lines in sub queries. The SQLfunction attribute tells sql server that this method is the actual UDF that SQL server will use. Save the file as a dll in a place where you can access it from management studio.

// default using statements above
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Data.SqlTypes;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Server;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

namespace CLR_Functions
{   
    public class myFunctions
    {
        [SqlFunction]
        public static SqlInt16 RegexContain(SqlString text, SqlString pattern)
        {            
            SqlInt16 returnVal = 0;
            try
            {
                string myText = text.ToString();
                string myPattern = pattern.ToString();
                MatchCollection mc = Regex.Matches(myText, myPattern);
                if (mc.Count > 0)
                {
                    returnVal = 1;
                }
            }
            catch
            {
                returnVal = 0;
            }

            return returnVal;
        }
    }
}

In management studio import the dll file via programability -- assemblies -- new assembly

Then run this query:

CREATE FUNCTION RegexContain(@text NVARCHAR(50), @pattern NVARCHAR(50))
RETURNS smallint 
AS
EXTERNAL NAME CLR_Functions.[CLR_Functions.myFunctions].RegexContain

Then you should have complete access to the function via the database you stored the assembly in.

Then use in queries like so:

SELECT * 
FROM 
(
    SELECT
        DailyLog.Date,
        DailyLog.Researcher,
        DailyLog.team,
        DailyLog.field,
        DailyLog.EntityID,
        DailyLog.[From],
        DailyLog.[To],
        dbo.RegexContain(Researcher, '[\p{L}\s]+') as 'is null values'
    FROM [DailyOps].[dbo].[DailyLog]
) AS a
WHERE a.[is null values] = 0