The often used approach with XML elements breaks in case of forbidden characters. This is an approach to use this method with any kind of character, even with the semicolon as delimiter.
The trick is, first to use SELECT SomeString AS [*] FOR XML PATH('')
to get all forbidden characters properly escaped. That's the reason, why I replace the delimiter to a magic value to avoid troubles with ;
as delimiter.
DECLARE @Dummy TABLE (ID INT, SomeTextToSplit NVARCHAR(MAX))
INSERT INTO @Dummy VALUES
(1,N'A&B;C;D;E, F')
,(2,N'"C" & ''D'';<C>;D;E, F');
DECLARE @Delimiter NVARCHAR(10)=';'; --special effort needed (due to entities coding with "&code;")!
WITH Casted AS
(
SELECT *
,CAST(N'<x>' + REPLACE((SELECT REPLACE(SomeTextToSplit,@Delimiter,N'§§Split$me$here§§') AS [*] FOR XML PATH('')),N'§§Split$me$here§§',N'</x><x>') + N'</x>' AS XML) AS SplitMe
FROM @Dummy
)
SELECT Casted.ID
,x.value(N'.',N'nvarchar(max)') AS Part
FROM Casted
CROSS APPLY SplitMe.nodes(N'/x') AS A(x)
The result
ID Part
1 A&B
1 C
1 D
1 E, F
2 "C" & 'D'
2 <C>
2 D
2 E, F