Removing space sql server 2008 - tsql

Question

I am trying to write a stored procedure in sql server 2008,I need to remove unwanted spaces in the entries of my table.I categorized the entries in my table to 3 types.My store procedure should remove the spaces around single letter,like,
A G M words to AGM words
words A G M words to words AGM words
A G words to AG words
I tried following stored procedure.
CREATE proc At1 #name nvarchar(100)
as
declare #start int
declare #temp1 nvarchar(100)
declare #temp nvarchar(100)
declare #NthPosition int
declare #N int
set #N=LEN(#name)
set #start=1
set #temp1=''
set #temp=''
set #NthPosition=charindex(' ',#name,#start)
if(#NthPosition<>0)
begin
while (#NthPosition<>0 and #N<>0)
begin
set #temp1=SUBSTRING(#name,#start,#NthPosition-1)
if(#temp<>'')
begin
if(len(#temp1)=1)
begin
set #temp=(#temp+#temp1)
end
else
begin
set #temp=(#temp+' '+#temp1)
end
end
else
begin
set #temp=#temp1
end
set #start=#NthPosition+1
set #N=#N-#NthPosition
set #NthPosition=0
set #NthPosition=CHARINDEX(' ',#name,#start)
end
end
else
begin
select #name
end
select #temp
GO
and i used ,
exec At1 'apple A G M mango'
My expected result: apple AGM mango
But my actual result:apple
I am unable to figure out where the error is..Any suggestions in this regard is more helpful.
I tried to use computed column that would clear the space and i was able to find solution only for pattern #3.I am unable to frame a computed column definition suitable for all the 3 patterns..... Please share your thoughts that will be helpful to me

Answer 1

I think this covers all the cases:
CREATE proc At1 #Name nvarchar(100)
as
declare #New nvarchar(100)
declare #SpacePos int
declare #Single bit
select #New = '',#Single = 0
select #Name = LTRIM(#Name)
while LEN(#name) > 0
begin
set #SpacePos = CHARINDEX(' ',#Name)
if #SpacePos = 0 --No more spaces in the string
begin
select #New = #New + CASE WHEN #Single = 1 and LEN(#Name) > 1 THEN ' ' ELSE '' END + #Name,
#Name = ''
end
else if #SpacePos = 2 --Single character "word"
begin
select #New = #New + SUBSTRING(#Name,1,1),
#Name = SUBSTRING(#Name,3,100),
#Single = 1
end
else --Multi-character word
begin
select #New = #New + CASE WHEN #Single = 1 THEN ' ' ELSE '' END + SUBSTRING(#Name,1,#SpacePos),
#Name = SUBSTRING(#Name,#SpacePos+1,100),
#Single = 0
end
end
select #New
go
And the examples:
exec At1 'apple A G M mango'
exec At1 'A G M words'
exec At1 'words A G M'
Produces:
apple AGM mango
AGM words
words AGM
(As a simplifying assumption, I assumed I was okay to remove any leading spaces from the original string. I also assume there are no double spaces in the string. If neither of those assumptions is accurate, a bit more work is required)

Answer 2

There might be a little more simpler approach to this, use replace instead of looping through everything and use the substring method.
But then again, you also might look at your input. How does this "processor" knows what a word is? For a matter of fact, the word applea (apple a) might not be a word you are looking for, where this processor potentially will see it as a word (theoretical)
The best thing you can do is to separate your input, for example with an semicolon ";". Then you can use a split functionallity to make those values into a table (for example look at this post : T-SQL: split and aggregate comma-separated values). Next you can use the replace function on it.
You get something like this
select replace(s.value, ' ' , ''), * from split(#value) as s