How to retrive firstname,middlename and lastname in a table

Question

Hi all,
Please can u help me anyone.
example:
EMP table
Ename column
ramesh sachin tendulkar
vara prasad
bala
how to display firstname,middlename,lastname in a emp table using oracle 9i.
firstname middlename lastname
ramesh sachin tendulkar
vara prasad
bala
Thank in advance

Answer 1

Something like this perhaps?
SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf
  1  with e as (select 'ramesh sachin tendulkar' as ename from dual union all
  2             select 'vara prasad' from dual union all
  3             select 'bala' from dual)
  4  --
  5  -- END OF TEST DATA
  6  --
  7  select substr(ename,1,decode(instr(ename,' '),0,length(ename),instr(ename,' '))) as firstname
  8        ,substr(ename,instr(ename,' ')+1,length(ename)-instr(ename,' ')-(length(ename)-instr(ename,' ',-1))) as middlename
  9        ,substr(ename,decode(instr(ename,' ',-1),0,length(ename)+1,instr(ename,' ',-1)+1)) as surname
10* from e
SQL> /
FIRSTNAME               MIDDLENAME              SURNAME
ramesh                  sachin                  tendulkar
vara                                            prasad
bala
SQL>If you upgraded to 10g or 11g it would be easier as you could use regular expressions.