Conversion of LOB to timestamp in Oracle 10G

Question

Hi all,
I am having a problem in converting a LOB ( which will have date value) to timestamp.
My LOB value will be in the format "(CLOB) 19/Feb/09 07:25 PM".
And I need to convert it into timestamp format with format 'dd-MON-yy HH:MI:SS AM'.
When I convert the LOB to char using to_char(dbms_lob.substr(oldstring, 18, 1)) where oldstring is the column name, I will get the value in the format '19/Feb/09 07:25 PM'. But after that I was not able to convert it into timestamp as I am getting the message 'ORA-01858' related to non-numeric character when it is expecting a numeric character.
Does anyone had this problem or is anyone having solution to this?
Thanks in advance..
-Raghu

Answer 1

And if you're worried about losing the time element... it's not lost
SQL> alter session set nls_date_format = 'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi:ss'
  2  /
Session altered.
SQL> create table test
  2  (oldstring clob)
  3  /
Table created.
SQL>
SQL> insert into test values ('19/Feb/09 07:25 PM')
  2  ;
1 row created.
SQL> select to_date (substr (oldstring, 1, 18), 'dd/Mon/rr hh:mi AM')
  2    from test;
TO_DATE(SUBSTR(OLDS
19-02-2009 19:25:00
SQL> drop table test
  2  /
Table dropped.
SQL>