Need help in SQL strings

Question

Team,
I have a requirement in my project where I need to take out a sub string from the main string and store in other column.
for example,
I have a table with 2 columns and table has more then 500 records.
1st column has the values like follows
'High Pressure  0.5 in'
'Wafer  0.3 in'
'Sanitary  3.0 in'
'8721 Hygienic  1.0 in'
My requirement is, I need to takeout inches part and store in 2nd column.
my 2nd column should contain values like 0.5, 0.3, 0.3, 1.0
Thanks in advance,
Rak

Answer 1

If you always have a decimal point and a fixed length for the inches:
SQL>
SQL> with t as (
  2  select 'High Pressure  0.5 in' str from dual union
  3  select 'Wafer  0.3 in' from dual union
  4  select 'Sanitary  3.0 in' from dual union
  5  select '8721 Hygienic  1.0 in' from dual
  6  )
  7  --
  8  --
  9  --
10  select str
11  ,      substr( str
12               , instr(str, '.' ,1 )-1
13               , instr(str, '.' ,1 )-instr(str, '.' ,1 )+3
14               ) inch
15  from   t;
STR                   INCH
8721 Hygienic  1.0 in 1.0
High Pressure  0.5 in 0.5
Sanitary  3.0 in      3.0
Wafer  0.3 in         0.3
4 rows selected.