I too think nested REPLACEs would probably be fastest.

You could do a simple function, but I'm not sure that would perform as well, let alone better ... but, really, with SQL, it's hard to tell so you may want to give it a try :-).

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.RemoveSpecifiedCharsFromString (

@string varchar(2000),

@charsToRemove varchar(50)

)

RETURNS varchar(2000)

AS

BEGIN

WHILE PATINDEX('%[' + @charsToRemove + ']%', @string) > 0

SET @string = STUFF(@string, PATINDEX('%[' + @charsToRemove + ']%', @string), 1, '')

RETURN @string

END --FUNCTION

DECLARE @string varchar(2000)

DECLARE @charsToRemove varchar(50)

SET @charsToRemove = CHAR(00) + CHAR(01) + CHAR(02) + CHAR(03) + CHAR(04) + CHAR(05) + /*... + */

CHAR(09) + CHAR(10) + /* ... + */ CHAR(13) + /* ... + */ CHAR(31)

SELECT string, dbo.RemoveSpecifiedCharsFromString(string, @charsToRemove)

FROM (

SELECT 'abc' + CHAR(10) + CHAR(13) + CHAR(01) + 'def' AS string UNION ALL

SELECT 'ghi' + CHAR(03) + CHAR(04) + REPLICATE(CHAR(05), 10) + 'jkl'

) AS test_data