Ltrim and rtrim

Question

NAME
THE ADAMS
ETH BILLA
EXP RAJA
I want to remove the THE From the name but when i use ltrim it removing
as below.
select ltrim(name,'the') from xy;
ADAMS
BILLA
XP RAJA
how can we remove the particular word "THE" from the string in the first occurence(left side).Pls suggest any method

Answer 1

the following will only work if the first occurrence is at the begining of the string
CASE
    WHEN  name LIKE 'THE %'
    THEN  SUBSTR (name, 5)
    ELSE  name
ENDthe following works for the first occurrence in the string, note the comment if you want to keep the extra space after the first THE
col txt format a30
with t as
(select column_value txt
   from table(sqlstringsequence('THE ADAMS', 'ETH BILLA', 'EXP RAJA', 'ETH BILLE THE ADAMS THE SMITHS')))
select case
        when instr(txt, 'THE') > 0
        then trim(substr(txt, 1, instr(txt, 'THE')-1)||substr(txt, instr(txt, 'THE')+4))--3 to keep space after THE
        else txt
       end txt,
       case
        when txt like 'THE %'
        then substr(txt, 5)
        else txt
       end txt2
  from t
/Edited by: mwooldridge on Jul 9, 2009 11:20 AM
Edited by: mwooldridge on Jul 9, 2009 11:23 AM