Help needed in padding an alphabet to a string

Question

Hi All,
I have situation like, I had to write a sql query for padding the alphabet we give as input to sql query in right extreme of the string, and the alphabet should get printed the no.of times we mention, omitting the no.of times that alphabet already available in that string.
Take for example,
I have the sting as 'Oracle', and I wanted to pad the alphabet 'e', 5 times to the string mentioned.
Than 'e' should be padded 4 times to 'Oracle' as already one 'e' is available in the string.
And the result should be 'Oracleeeee'.
Please do guide me in this.
Regards,
Shivakumar A

Answer 1

Igor.M wrote:
with sample_table as (
select 'Oracle' str from dual union all
select 'SQL' str from dual union all
select 'SQL e.e.e.e.e.e' str from dual union all
select 'e' str from dual union all
select 'SQL Server' from dual
select
case when
nvl(length(str)-length(replace(str,'e')),0) < 5
then rpad(str,5+nvl(length(str)-length(replace(str,'e')),0),'e')
else str
end str
from sample_table
Edited by: Igor.M on 22.02.2012 08:05Completely wrong....
SQL> with sample_table as (
  2  select 'Oracle' str from dual union all
  3  select 'SQL' str from dual union all
  4  select 'SQL e.e.e.e.e.e' str from dual union all
  5  select 'e' str from dual union all
  6  select 'SQL Server' from dual
  7  )
  8  select str,
  9  case when
10  length(str)-length(replace(str,'e')) < 5 or length(str)-length(replace(str,'e')) is null
11  then rpad(str,5+nvl(length(str)-length(replace(str,'e')),0),'e')
12  else str
13  end str1
14  from sample_table;
STR                  STR1
Oracle               Oracle
SQL                  SQLee
SQL e.e.e.e.e.e      SQL e.e.e.e.e.e
e                    eeeee
SQL Server           SQL Ser