What's the best way to identify hidden characters in the result of a query in SQL Server (Query Analyzer)?

Question

When trying to identify erroneous data (often needing manual review and removal), I'd like an easy way of seeing hidden characters, such as TAB, Space, Carriage return and Line feed. Is there a built-in way for this?

In a similar question here on stackoverflow, regarding Oracle, a DUMP(fieldname) function was suggested, but I don't know if that woud make things easier even if a corresponding function would exist in SQL Server, since I need to see the Characters in their context.

The best idea I could come up with was replacing the expected hidden characters with visible ones, like this:

SELECT REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(myfield, ' ', '˙'), CHAR(13), '[CR]'), CHAR(10), '[LF]'), CHAR(9), '[TAB]') FROM mytable

Is there a better way? I don't like this way since there might be other less common hidden characters that are not taken into account by me such as vertical TAB etc... Turning on "show hidden characters", as you can do in almost any text editor, would be such a nice feature in SQL Server Query Analyzer, so I almost expect that it can be done somehow in SQL server as well... or at least that someone has an even better idea than mine, to show this kind of white space info.

I just noticed that there is a built-in way to see "white space", not in SQL Query Analyzer, but in the part of the interface that once was the SQL Enterprise manager. Right-click a table in SQL Management Studio Object Explorer tree, and select "Edit top 200 rows". In the result white space (at least CR LF) is visible as empty squares.

Answer 1

Create a function that addresses all the whitespace possibilites and enable only those that seem appropriate:

SELECT dbo.ShowWhiteSpace(myfield) from mytable

Uncomment only those whitespace cases you want to test for:

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.ShowWhiteSpace (@str varchar(8000))
RETURNS varchar(8000)
AS
BEGIN
     DECLARE @ShowWhiteSpace varchar(8000);
     SET @ShowWhiteSpace = @str
     SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(32), '[?]')
     SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(13), '[CR]')
     SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(10), '[LF]')
     SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(9),  '[TAB]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(1),  '[SOH]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(2),  '[STX]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(3),  '[ETX]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(4),  '[EOT]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(5),  '[ENQ]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(6),  '[ACK]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(7),  '[BEL]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(8),  '[BS]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(11), '[VT]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(12), '[FF]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(14), '[SO]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(15), '[SI]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(16), '[DLE]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(17), '[DC1]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(18), '[DC2]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(19), '[DC3]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(20), '[DC4]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(21), '[NAK]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(22), '[SYN]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(23), '[ETB]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(24), '[CAN]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(25), '[EM]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(26), '[SUB]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(27), '[ESC]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(28), '[FS]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(29), '[GS]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(30), '[RS]')
--   SET @ShowWhiteSpace = REPLACE( @ShowWhiteSpace, CHAR(31), '[US]')
     RETURN(@ShowWhiteSpace)
END