How to find out first words in a sting

Question

Hi All,
I have a requirement to find out first two words in a string by using SQL.
Your help will be more appreciated.
Thank you,

Answer 1

Thanks for pointing it out, sy...
user536769:
depending on the range of characters that can be present in a word in your system, the RE can be made more exhaustive:
test@ORA10G>
test@ORA10G> @ver1
BANNER
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Prod
test@ORA10G>
test@ORA10G> with t as (
  2    select 'a man, a plan, a canal - Panama' as x from dual union all
  3    select 'the quick brown fox' from dual union all
  4    select 'Cast Away' from dual union all
  5    select 'Help! (1965) - The Beatles' from dual union all
  6    select 'R2-D2, Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi, C-3PO' from dual union all
  7    select 'first       second third' from dual union all
  8    select '"The'||chr(9)||'Bet"'||chr(9)||'by Anton Chekhov' from dual union all
  9    select 'abracadabra' from dual
10  )
11  select
12    x as string,
13    regexp_replace(x, '([a-zA-Z"0-9!)(._,-]+)\s+([a-zA-Z"0-9!)(._,-]+).*$','\1 \2') as first_two
14  from t;
STRING                                                       FIRST_TWO
a man, a plan, a canal - Panama                              a man,
the quick brown fox                                          the quick
Cast Away                                                    Cast Away
Help! (1965) - The Beatles                                   Help! (1965)
R2-D2, Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi, C-3PO   R2-D2, Anakin
first       second third                                     first second
"The    Bet"    by Anton Chekhov                                   "The Bet"
abracadabra                                                  abracadabra
8 rows selected.
test@ORA10G>
test@ORA10G>
test@ORA10G>cheers,
pratz