How to remove special characters in a particular column

Question

Hello,
i have a csv feed and i load it into a sql table (the sql table has all varchar data type fields)
feed data looks like (just sampled 2 rows but my file has thousands of like this)
"K" "AIF" "AMERICAN IND FORCE" "FRI" "EXAMP" "133" "DISPLAY" "505250" "MEDIA INC." 03/01/10" "INV31202" ".00" ".00" "0.00" "ALLO" ;
"K" "AIF" "AMERICAN IND FORCE" "THU" "TRTH" "123" "MUN MARCH 2010" "505099" "SOCIALTYZE" "03/01/10" "1308" "40,282.32" "40,282.32" "45564.64" "DIS" ;
some times i got some special characters in my table column (example: in my invoice no column some time i do have # or ! kind of invalid characters ) so how can i remove some kind of special characters in my column
once it is eliminated then i can write it to new table (with correct data format such as integer)
could some one please tell me how can i remove special character in a column of particular table
thanks in advance
asita

Answer 1

Removes any characters from
@myString that do not meet the
provided criteria.
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.GetCharacters(@myString varchar(500), @validChars varchar(100))
RETURNS varchar(500) AS
BEGIN
While @myString like '%[^' + @validChars + ']%'
Select @myString = replace(@myString,substring(@myString,patindex('%[^' + @validChars + ']%',@myString),1),'')
Return @myString
END
Go
Declare @testStr varchar(1000),
@i int
Set @i = 1
while @i < 255
Select
@TestStr = isnull(@TestStr,'') + isnull(char(@i),''),
@i = @i + 1
Select @TestStr
Select dbo.GetCharacters(@TestStr,'a-z')
Select dbo.GetCharacters(@TestStr,'0-9')
Select dbo.GetCharacters(@TestStr,'0-9a-z')
Select dbo.GetCharacters(@TestStr,'02468bferlki')
perfect soluction