Can i get an exact part of data from select statement

Question

hi...good afternoon...
i want to fetch the records from a table by select statement. but i dont want to fetch the as it is record. i want to fetch a particular part of eacg record in that column.
for example..
table_name=tab1
column_name=col1
the col1 contains datas like *'customer search-cs', 'get customer-gc', 'customer delete-cd'* etc etc..
now while writing the select query, i want to get the descriptive output as get customer, customer search, customer delete....that is i dont want the symbols..
is it possible to get this???
plss suggest...

Answer 1

You mean like these possible ways of doing it...
SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf
  1* select substr('customer search-cs',1,length('customer search-cs')-3) from dual
SQL> /
SUBSTR('CUSTOME
customer search
SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf
  1* select regexp_substr('customer search-cs','^[^-]*') from dual
SQL> /
REGEXP_SUBSTR('
customer search
SQL>