REGEXP_REPLACE (Transact-SQL) preview

2025-05-22

Applies to: SQL Server 2025 (17.x) Preview Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Managed Instance SQL database in Microsoft Fabric

Note

As a preview feature, the technology presented in this article is subject to Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews.

Returns a modified source string replaced by a replacement string, where the occurrence of the regular expression pattern found. If no matches are found, the function returns the original string.

REGEXP_REPLACE
     (
      string_expression,
      pattern_expression [, string_replacement [, start [, occurrence [, flags ] ] ] ]
     )

Arguments

string_expression

An expression of a character string.

Can be a constant, variable, or column of character string.

Data types: char, nchar, varchar, or nvarchar.

Note

The REGEXP_LIKE, REGEXP_COUNT, and REGEXP_INSTR functions support LOB types (varchar(max) and nvarchar(max)) up to 2 MB for the string_expression parameter.

pattern_expression

Regular expression pattern to match. Usually a text literal.

Data types: char, nchar, varchar, or nvarchar. pattern_expression supports a maximum character length of 8,000 bytes.

string_replacement

String expression that specifies the replacement string for matching substrings and replaces the substrings matched by the pattern. The string_replacement can be of char, varchar, nchar, and nvarchar datatypes. If an empty string (' ') is specified, the function removes all matched patterns and returns the resulting string. The default replacement string is the empty string (' ').

The string_replacement can contain \n, where n is 1 through 9, to indicate that the source substring matching the n'th parenthesized group (subexpression) of the pattern should be inserted, and it can contain & to indicate that the substring matching the entire pattern should be inserted. Write \ if you need to put a literal backslash in the replacement text.

For example

REGEXP_REPLACE('123-456-7890', '(\d{3})-(\d{3})-(\d{4})', '(\1) \2-\3')

Returns:

(123) 456-7890

If the provided \n in string_replacement is greater than the number of groups in the pattern_expression, then the function ignores the value.

For example:

REGEXP_REPLACE('123-456-7890', '(\d{3})-(\d{3})-(\d{4})', '(\1) (\4)-xxxx')

Returns:

(123) ()-xxxx

start

Specify the starting position for the search within the search string. Optional. Type is int or bigint.

The numbering is 1-based, meaning the first character in the expression is 1 and the value must be >= 1. If the start expression is less than 1, returns error. If the start expression is greater than the length of string_expression, the function returns string_expression. The default is 1.

occurrence

An expression (positive integer) that specifies which occurrence of the pattern expression within the source string to be searched or replaced. Default is 1. Searches at the first character of the string_expression. For a positive integer n, it searches for the nth occurrence beginning with the first character following the first occurrence of the pattern_expression, and so forth.

flags

One or more characters that specify the modifiers used for searching for matches. Type is varchar or char, with a maximum of 30 characters.

For example, ims. The default is c. If an empty string (' ') is provided, it will be treated as the default value ('c'). Supply c or any other character expressions. If flag contains multiple contradictory characters, then SQL Server uses the last character.

For example, if you specify ic the regex returns case-sensitive matching.

If the value contains a character other than those listed at Supported flag values, the query returns an error like the following example:

Invalid flag provided. '<invalid character>' are not valid flags. Only {c,i,s,m} flags are valid.

Supported flag values

Flag	Description
`i`	Case-insensitive (default `false`)
`m`	Multi-line mode: `^` and `$` match begin/end line in addition to begin/end text (default `false`)
`s`	Let `.` match `\n` (default `false`)
`c`	Case-sensitive (default `true`)

Return value

Expression.

Examples

Replace all occurrences of a or e with X in the product names.

SELECT REGEXP_REPLACE(PRODUCT_NAME, '[ae]', 'X', 1, 0, 'i')
FROM PRODUCTS;

Replace the first occurrence of cat or dog with pet in the product descriptions

SELECT REGEXP_REPLACE(PRODUCT_DESCRIPTION, 'cat|dog', 'pet', 1, 1, 'i')
FROM PRODUCTS;

Replace the last four digits of the phone numbers with asterisks

SELECT REGEXP_REPLACE(PHONE_NUMBER, '\d{4}$', '****')
FROM CUSTOMERS;

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