How to remove redundant phrase in field?

Hi all........

I have a table field that contains things such as.....

V DISCONTINUED W/O REPLACEMENT; V DISCONTINUED W/O REPLACEMENT

-I&S MASTER; 7 SUB 2610-139-3704; I&S MASTER; 7 SUB FOR 2610-139-3704

What I need to do is remove the duplicate phrases, leaving only one instance of each phrase in the field. The amount of phrases in the field varies...could be 2 as shown above or there could be 6. I suspect that the 'common denominator' is the semi-colon, but everything I've tried has failed.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks...but can you possibly give me an example of this

Unfortunately, there are literally hundreds of thousands of possible phrases. Somehow I need to look at 'field1' in every record (several million records) and allow only one instance of a given phrase.. ..note: there can be more than one phrase in 'field1', but the same phrase cannot be there more than once.

thanks much for the help!

First you should determine what a sentence is, for example:
- From a delimiter (start, ";", end) to another.
- A certain quantity of characters.
With delimiters can make a surer and faster code.
Taking N characters the code would be slower but perhaps it serves you, for example:

LOCAL x as Character
LOCAL i as Integer
LOCAL iEnd as Integer
LOCAL iStart as Integer
LOCAL iMinSize as Integer

LOCAL iPartial as Character
LOCAL iSize as integer

iMinSize = 4
iSize = iMinSize

x="Hola Carlos como te va Hola Carlos Hola Carlos como te va como te va "
iStart = 1
iEnd = LEN(x)

DO WHILE iStart + iSize < iEnd
iPartial = SUBSTR(x, iStart, iSize)
IF OCCURS(iPartial, x) > 1
DO WHILE OCCURS(iPartial, x) > 1 AND iStart + iSize < iEnd
iSize = iSize + 1
iPartial = SUBSTR(x, iStart, iSize)
ENDDO
iPartial = SUBSTR(x, iStart, iSize-1)
x=STRTRAN(x, iPartial, "", 1,1)
ELSE
iStart = iStart + 1
ENDIF
iSize = iMinSize
ENDDO

MESSAGEBOX(x)

The data is extracted from a govt stock number database...unfortunately there is no way to control how the phrases appear...other that the fact that they are separtaed by semi-colons.

Thanks...that looks like what I need! But being the novice that I am with this stuff I have not been able to get it to work. Guess I'm having trouble translating the code.

Hello CDFAUX

Thought this worked for me, but here's what I got:

This.........

- I&S MASTER; R REFER TO AFT095REQ; R REFER TO AFT95; R REFER TO DATA REQUIRED; R REFER TO ITEM-SERIAL #; R REFER TO LIFE CONSUMED; R REFER TO T.O. 00-20-3; R REFER TO TIME CHANGE; 7 SUB FOR 2840-01-230-86

Became this........

-I&S MASTER095REQAFT95DATA REQUIRITEM-SERIAL #LIFE CONSUMED.O. 00-20-3; RREFER TO TIME CHANGE; 7 SUB FOR 2840-01-230-86

Guess I could say it's close(r)...but no cigar.