Case Insensitive REPLACE() for MySQL

One request I occasionally see is for a case insensitive version of REPLACE() for MySQL. I wrote this a while back, but here it is now for all of you to play around with. It uses a basic naïve string search algorithm, so can be slow under some circumstances.

DELIMITER $$
 
DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS `replace_ci`$$
CREATE FUNCTION `replace_ci` ( str TEXT,needle CHAR(255),str_rep CHAR(255))
    RETURNS TEXT
    DETERMINISTIC
    BEGIN
        DECLARE return_str TEXT DEFAULT '';
        DECLARE lower_str TEXT;
        DECLARE lower_needle TEXT;
        DECLARE pos INT DEFAULT 1;
        DECLARE old_pos INT DEFAULT 1;
 
        SELECT lower(str) INTO lower_str;
        SELECT lower(needle) INTO lower_needle;
        SELECT locate(lower_needle, lower_str, pos) INTO pos;
        WHILE pos > 0 DO
            SELECT concat(return_str, substr(str, old_pos, pos-old_pos), str_rep) INTO return_str;
            SELECT pos + char_length(needle) INTO pos;
            SELECT pos INTO old_pos;
            SELECT locate(lower_needle, lower_str, pos) INTO pos;
        END WHILE;
        SELECT concat(return_str, substr(str, old_pos, char_length(str))) INTO return_str;
        RETURN return_str;
END$$
 
DELIMITER ;
 
SELECT replace_ci( 'mySQL', 'M', 'M' );

It’s also available on MySQL Forge.