Finding special characters in a string

Question

Hi all, I'm using Oracle 10g.
I have a column name with special characters. how can i replace the special characters in the column with space and no space depending on the special character. please see the example below. can i use REGEXP_REPLACE?
create table
create table sample_test (
  Name    VARCHAR2(20 BYTE))insert table
insert into sample_test values ('O''NEIL')
     insert into sample_test values ('B.E.VICTOR')
      insert into sample_test values ('WILLIAM,L')
       insert into sample_test values ('MARY-ANNE')
           insert into sample_test values ('VON_ANCKEN')
            insert into sample_test values ('BROWN;L')i would like the output as follows
Special Character         Name         Expected Name                  Remarks     
Single Quotes            O'NEIL                  ONEIL                          Remove quotes and no space       
Dot                      B.E.VICTOR         B E VICTOR                          Replace with space       
Comma                      WILLIAM,L         WILLIAM L                          Replace with space       
Hyphen                      MARY-ANNE         MARY ANNE                          Replace with space       
Underscore                VON_ANCKEN         VON ANCKEN                          Replace with space       
Semi Colon              BROWN;L          BROWN L                          Replace with space      Please advise.
Thanks
Bob

Answer 1

A simple solution without regexp usage:
-- Test Data
with sample_test as
select 'O''NEIL' name from dual union all
select 'B.E.VICTOR'  name from dual union all
select'WILLIAM,L' name from dual union all
select'MARY-ANNE' name from dual union all
select'VON_ANCKEN' name from dual union all
select'BROWN;L' name from dual
-- Query:
select name old_name,
       translate(replace(name,'''',''),'.,-_;','     ') new_name
from sample_test;Explanation:
REPLACE deletes the quote
TRANSLATE replaces dot, comma, hyphen, semicolon and underscore