Identify special characters in oracle 9i

Question

HI,
I want to identify the special characters in a table.Right now i am using oracle 9i version.
Please help us.

Answer 1

You can use following pl/sql block for this purpose. It will check if there is any special character in a field(item description here) and will display that display the position and ascii value of that special character. Later you can write another query(if needed) to remove those special characters.
Modify the query as needed.
declare
l_desc VARCHAR2(90);
l_length NUMBER;
l_cnt NUMBER := 1;
l_char VARCHAR2(20);
l_spc_char NUMBER := 0;
CURSOR c1 is select segment1, description, length(description) length1 from mtl_system_items_b where 1=1 rownum < 10000  and segment1 = '00000942304A330'
and organization_id = 156;
begin
FOR c_rec IN C1
LOOP
l_cnt := 1;
l_spc_char := 0;
WHILE l_cnt <= c_rec.length1
LOOP
l_char := SUBSTR(c_rec.description,l_cnt,1);
IF (ascii(l_char) < 32 or ascii(l_char) > 126) then
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Character: '||l_char||' Position: '||l_cnt||' Ascii Value: '||ascii(l_char));
l_spc_char := l_spc_char + 1;
end if;
l_cnt := l_cnt + 1 ;
END LOOP;
IF l_spc_char > 0 THEN
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Item: '||c_rec.segment1||' Description: '||c_rec.description);
END IF;
END LOOP;
end;