Delimited List to Table

Peter Debetta published the article "Delimited List to Table" and stated in the article "I'm sure this could be optimized in a number of ways, and could also be made to trim extra spaces as well. If you have any suggestions, please add them as comments for one and all to see.".

I thought the function was too verbose for a function which just split a string into a table of values, so I optimized his function and I am posting here the result for appreciation. Any comments are welcome.

Regards,

Luciano Evaristo Guerche
Jacarei, SP, Brazil

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.Split2Table(@WhatToSplit varchar(8000), @Delimiter char(1))
RETURNS @ReturnTable TABLE (ListValue Sql_Variant)
AS
BEGIN
    DECLARE @StartAt int
    DECLARE @DelimiterPosition int

    SET @StartAt = 1
    SET @DelimiterPosition = COALESCE(NULLIF(CHARINDEX(@Delimiter, @WhatToSplit, @StartAt), 0), LEN(@WhatToSplit) + 1)
    WHILE @DelimiterPosition BETWEEN @StartAt AND LEN(@WhatToSplit) + 1
    BEGIN
        INSERT INTO @ReturnTable
        (ListValue)
        VALUES
        (SUBSTRING(@WhatToSplit, @StartAt, @DelimiterPosition - @StartAt))

        SET @StartAt = @DelimiterPosition + 1
        SET @DelimiterPosition = COALESCE(NULLIF(CHARINDEX(@Delimiter, @WhatToSplit, @StartAt), 0), LEN(@WhatToSplit) + 1)
    END
    RETURN
END
GO

/*
-- Some tests below

/*
-- Some tests below

/*
-- Some tests below

SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Split2Table](',', ',')
GO

SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Split2Table]('a ,b ,c ,d ,e ', ',')
GO

SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Split2Table](' a, b, c, d, e', ',')
GO

SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Split2Table]('a,,b,,c,,d,,', ',')
GO
*/