INITCAP dilemma

Question

Hi all,
Does anyone know a clean and simple way without writing
functions or using pl/sql logic to solve the INITCAP issue below.
When i try to use the INITCAP function on a value, any special
characters(such as '"#) will capitalise the value after that,
for e.g,
SELECT INITCAP('testing''s this proble@m') FROM DUAL
will result in,
Testing'S This Proble@M
The result i'm looking for is
Testing's This Proble@m
I've tried using the replace function,
SELECT (REPLACE((INITCAP(REPLACE('testing''s this
proble@m','''','xyz'))),'xyz','''')) FROM DUAL
which results in,
Testing's This Proble@M
but this only replaces one character and the replace function
does not allow for multiple arguments so i still have the @M
to deal with.
I've also tried the Translate function,
SELECT (TRANSLATE((INITCAP(TRANSLATE('testing''s this
proble@m','''@','12'))),'12','''@')) FROM DUAL
which gives me the ideal result,
Testing's This Proble@m
However, this is not 100% fullproof because i'm translating
the '' and the @ to the alphanumeric values of 1 and 2
respectively. If the value i'm translating happens to contain
values of 1 and 2, then this will not work because they
themselves will be translated back to '' and @
If possible, i would like to translate the values to some
alphanumeric values which are not likely to be used on the
keyboard. I can't use special characters such as *% as this is
not recognised by either the Translate or replace function and
will capitalise it, which brings us back to the original problem!
Does anybody have any suggestions?

Answer 1

Thanks David,
I've tried all the different character sets that's in the Oracle
Documentation such as,
US7ASCII
WE8DECDEC
WE8HP
F7DEC
WE8EBCDIC500
WE8PC850
WE8ISO8859P1
and tried to use the convert function before my translate
functions and it doesn't seem to work for any of them, i.e, does
not recognise the converted values uniquely or unsupported
character set. I guess i can't avoid using PL/SQL logic.
I don't have anyway of testing this, but might it be possible to use the CONVERT() function to allow more special characters
to be used - one's that aren't in your database character set -
then apply your translate function, then use CONVERT() to change
the character set back again?