I've used recursive calls to TSQL functions and sprocs to process hierarchical data. The biggest hitch is the 32 nestlevel limitation. Most trees are less than 32 levels...

Here's a bad answer... update it in enterprise manager or some other interface where you can selectively update the record.

The real question is why do you have dup records? ...

Nic, the thought of parsing through an input text string is something I generally try to avoid.

Have you considered loading the individual words into a global temp table?...