I just wanted to play a little bit with the DelimitedSplit8k and this is what came out.

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[ItemsLength]

(

@pString [varchar](8000),

@pDelimiter [char](1)

)

RETURNS TABLE WITH SCHEMABINDING

AS

RETURN

--===== "Inline" CTE Driven "Tally Table" produces values from 0 up to 10,000...

-- enough to cover NVARCHAR(4000)

WITH E1(N) AS (

SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL

SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL

SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1 UNION ALL SELECT 1

), --10E+1 or 10 rows

E2(N) AS (SELECT 1 FROM E1 a, E1 b), --10E+2 or 100 rows

E4(N) AS (SELECT 1 FROM E2 a, E2 b), --10E+4 or 10,000 rows max

cteTally(N) AS (--==== This provides the "base" CTE and limits the number of rows right up front

-- for both a performance gain and prevention of accidental "overruns"

SELECT TOP (ISNULL(DATALENGTH(@pString),0) + 1) ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) FROM E4

),

cteDelims(N, row) AS (--==== This returns position of each delimiter

SELECT 0 , 1 UNION ALL

SELECT t.N, ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY t.N) + 1 FROM cteTally t WHERE SUBSTRING(@pString + ' ',t.N,1) = @pDelimiter

)

SELECT d2.N - d1.N - 1

FROM cteDelims d1

JOIN cteDelims d2 ON d1.row = d2.row - 1

;