SQL Server replace, remove all after certain character

Question

My data looks like

ID    MyText
1     some text; some more text
2     text again; even more text

How can I update MyText to drop everything after the semi-colon and including the semi colon, so I'm left with the following:

ID    MyText
1     some text
2     text again

I've looked at SQL Server Replace, but can't think of a viable way of checking for the ";"

Answer 1

Use CHARINDEX to find the ";". Then use SUBSTRING to just return the part before the ";".

Answer 2

UPDATE MyTable
   SET MyText = SUBSTRING(MyText, 1, CHARINDEX(';', MyText) - 1)
 WHERE CHARINDEX(';', MyText) > 0

Answer 3

Use LEFT combined with CHARINDEX:

update MyTable set MyText = left(MyText, charindex(';', MyText) - 1)