Format model oddity; G and V combined

Question

Hi,
can I have your opinion on this..
Some background if you're not familiar with the 'V' in format models:
select to_char(100, '999999999V9') newnum from dual;  --- 100 * 10^1 =   1 000
select to_char(100, '99999999V99') newnum from dual;  --- 100 * 10^2 =  10 000
select to_char(100, '9999999V999') newnum from dual;  --- 100 * 10^3 = 100 000In short; it multiplies with 10 ^ (number of 9's after the V) , and rounds as needed. Simple, and sometimes useful.
Now, I found that I could format the result with group separator in one go, so I had this
select to_char(1000000, '999G999G999') newnum from dual;  --- 1 mill -> 1,000,000reduced to 100K , and added a V9 to the end of the format model:
select to_char(100000, '999G999G999V9') newnum from dual;  --- 1 mill -> 1,000,000 ??but I got this:
100,0000
1 row selected.
Now, wouldn't you agree it's a bit weird? I would have expected the V to operate before the G's , to return 1,000,000 .
How about you? There are others that could be useful which doesn't work, for example
select to_char( 1000, '999G999.99V9') newnum from dual;
ORA-01481: invalid number format modelwhen I'd like to see '10 000.00'. Feels a little buggy that it works at all, the above?
I have
select * from nls_database_parameters;
PARAMETER                      VALUE                                  
NLS_LANGUAGE                   AMERICAN                               
NLS_TERRITORY                  AMERICA                                
NLS_CURRENCY                   $                                      
NLS_ISO_CURRENCY               AMERICA                                
NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS         .,                                     
NLS_CHARACTERSET               WE8MSWIN1252                           
NLS_CALENDAR                   GREGORIAN                              
NLS_DATE_FORMAT                DD-MON-RR                              
NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE              AMERICAN                               
NLS_SORT                       BINARY                                 
NLS_TIME_FORMAT                HH.MI.SSXFF AM                         
NLS_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT           DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM               
NLS_TIME_TZ_FORMAT             HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR                     
NLS_TIMESTAMP_TZ_FORMAT        DD-MON-RR HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR           
NLS_DUAL_CURRENCY              $                                      
NLS_COMP                       BINARY                                 
NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS           BYTE                                   
NLS_NCHAR_CONV_EXCP            FALSE                                  
NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET         AL16UTF16                              
NLS_RDBMS_VERSION              11.2.0.1.0                             
20 rows selected.Well, just thought I'd mention it :)
Rgds, A

Answer 1

Hi,
Arild wrote:
... Some background if you're not familiar with the 'V' in format models:Thanks; I'm not familiar with it. I've never seen it used, let alone used it myself.
Do you actually use it in production code?
... Now, wouldn't you agree it's a bit weird? I would have expected the V to operate before the G's , to return 1,000,000 .
How about you? There are others that could be useful which doesn't work, for example
>
select to_char( 1000, '999G999.99V9') newnum from dual;
ORA-01481: invalid number format model
I'd be interested in learning why Oracle included this. I suspect some important customer asked for it long ago, and Oracle has continued to support it, but not very much. (That is, they haven't tried to make it a little more useful, by letting it do things like your examples.) They haven't documented it very well, either. For example, the SQL language manual
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28286/sql_elements004.htm#sthref379
says very clearly that 'TM' format can't be combined with certain other elements, but, just a few lines later, says nothing about combining 'V' with other elements.
It's not that hard to say
select  to_char (1000 * 10, '999G999.99')    AS newnum
from    dual; it that's what you really need to do. Can you think of any examples where a work-around would be very inconvenient?