Replace a specific character with blank - sql

Question

How can I replace 'a' to blank?
`Name` `ID`
----------------------------------
`b,c,d,e,abb,a` `1`
`b,c,d,a,e,abb` `2`
`a,b,c,d,a,e,abb` `3`

Answer 1

One way to do it would be to add a , to the beginning and end of each Name, then replace every occurence of ',a,' with ',', then trim the result of the ,:
update table_name
set Name = trim(',' from replace(concat(',', Name, ','), ',a,', ','));
Fiddle
Or if you just want to do a select without changing the rows:
select trim(',' from replace(concat(',', Name, ','), ',a,', ',')) as Name, ID
from table_name;
To address #Iptr's comment, if there can be consecutive a such as a, a, ..., you could use STRING_SPLIT to get rows from comma-separated values, then filter out where the value is a, then STRING_AGG and group by to get the comma separated values back:
select ID, STRING_AGG(u.Value, ',') as Name
from table_name
cross apply STRING_SPLIT (Name, ',') u
where Value <> 'a'
group by ID
Fiddle

Answer 2

Here is a solution based on tokenization via XML/XQuery.
It will work starting from SQL Server 2012 onwards.
Steps:
We are tokenizing a string of tokens via XML.
XQuery FLWOR expression is filtering out the 'a' token.
Reverting it back to a string of tokens.
SQL
-- DDL and sample data population, start
DECLARE #tbl TABLE (ID INT IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY, tokens VARCHAR(1000));
INSERT INTO #tbl (tokens) VALUES
('b,c,d,e,abb,a'),
('b,c,d,a,e,abb'),
('a,b,c,d,a,e,abb');
-- DDL and sample data population, end
DECLARE #separator CHAR(1) = ',';
SELECT t.*
, REPLACE(c.query('
for $x in /root/r/text()
return if ($x = "a") then ()
else data($x)
').value('.', 'VARCHAR(MAX)'), SPACE(1), #separator) AS Result
FROM #tbl AS t
CROSS APPLY (SELECT TRY_CAST('<root><r><![CDATA[' +
REPLACE(tokens, #separator, ']]></r><r><![CDATA[') +
']]></r></root>' AS XML)) AS t1(c);
Output
+----+-----------------+-------------+
| ID | tokens | Result |
+----+-----------------+-------------+
| 1 | b,c,d,e,abb,a | b,c,d,e,abb |
| 2 | b,c,d,a,e,abb | b,c,d,e,abb |
| 3 | a,b,c,d,a,e,abb | b,c,d,e,abb |
+----+-----------------+-------------+

Answer 3

Try as follow:
select Replace(name, N'a', N'') as RepName , ID from yourTable

Answer 4

Try this.
SELECT ID,Name, REPLACE(Name, 'a', ' ')
FROM tableName;