Format an alpha numeric string

Question

Good day all,
I have what i hope to be a simple question. I have a table that i am storing Latitude and longitude in. The current format for each is as an example N432301 for the Latitude and
W0844150 for the Longitude.
I need the output formated to
N-43-23-01 for Latitude
and
W-84-41-50 for Longitude.

Answer 1

GMoney wrote:
Greg,
I ran this using the following:
{code}
with xx as ( select 'N402456' lat, 'W1203926' lon from dual )
select substr(lat,1,1) || '-' || substr(lat,2,2) || '-' || substr(lat,4,2) || '-' || substr(lat,6,2) latitude,
substr(lon,1,1) || '-' || substr(lon,3,2) || '-' || substr(lon,5,2) || '-' || substr(lon,7,2) longitude
from xx;
{code}
and the result was :
LATITUDE
LONGITUDE
N-40-24-56
W-20-39-26
which is wrong because in this case the lon was 3 char versus 2 after dropping the '0' from the 084.
That's why I started with "We really need the rules to make sure it's accurate, "
Seriously, if you don't give us good specifics, you can't complain that much if we don't get all your requirements in the first run.
If you confirm that first one is 3 digits, no problem ...
       substr(lon,1,1) || '-' || substr(lon,2,3) || '-' || substr(lon,5,2) || '-' || substr(lon,7,2) longitude
if you need to drop the 0 on the previous example (again guessing, because you haven't given any real rules )
       substr(lon,1,1) || '-' || to_char(to_number(substr(lon,2,3)),'fm999') || '-' || substr(lon,5,2) || '-' || substr(lon,7,2) longitude
but at this point, Mike's reg exp shenanigans probably work better
lol
[edit]
Just for completeness:
with xx as ( select 'N432301' lat, 'W0844150' lon from dual union all
             select 'N402456'    , 'W1203926'      from dual
select substr(lat,1,1) || '-' || substr(lat,2,2) || '-' || substr(lat,4,2) || '-' || substr(lat,6,2) latitude,
       substr(lon,1,1) || '-' || to_char(to_number(substr(lon,2,3)),'fm999') || '-' || substr(lon,5,2) || '-' || substr(lon,7,2) longitude
  from xx;
LATITUDE   LONGITUDE  
N-43-23-01 W-84-41-50 
N-40-24-56 W-120-39-26
2 rows selected.
With great requirements, comes great results.
With poor requirements, comes poor results