Need some help in writing a function

Question

Hi all,
I need to write a function....
the data in a table is of varchar2 type and its a ,separated values.
its in many forms
sample ex:1,2,3,4,,,,,76,
12,32,,,,,,,,
12,32
12,,,,,23,,,,
the total numbers in that field must be 10.
So i need to write sthg which takes the data,remove the commas and return as an array.As in the example some numbers are missing and only ,'s are there.
If a number is missing i need to load NULL in place of that.the output must be an array containng 10 values(if no value a NULL).
Can anyone help me regardng this....

Answer 1

create table x1 (x varchar2(100))
insert into x1 (x) values ('1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10');
insert into x1 (x) values ('1,,3,,5,,7,,9,');
insert into x1 (x) values ('1,,,,,,,,10');
insert into x1 (x) values ('1,2,3,,,,,8,9,10');
insert into x1 (x) values ('1,,3,,5,,7,,9,');
create type vc20_ttyp is varray(10) of varchar2(20)
create or replace function tokenize(p_str               in varchar2,
                                    p_seperator               in varchar2 default ',')
  return vc20_ttyp is
v_tab     vc20_ttyp;
v_tmp     varchar2(32767);
v_token     varchar(256);
x     integer;
begin
v_tab := vc20_ttyp();
v_tmp := ltrim(rtrim(p_str));
while v_tmp is not null
loop
  x := instr(v_tmp, p_seperator);
  if x = 0
   then x := length(v_tmp)+1;
  end if;
  v_token := ltrim(rtrim(substr(v_tmp, 1, x-1)));
  if v_token is not null
   then v_tab.extend;
        v_tab(v_tab.count) := v_token;
   else v_tab.extend;
        v_tab(v_tab.count) := null;
  end if;
  v_tmp := substr(v_tmp, x+length(p_seperator));
end loop;
return v_tab;
end tokenize;
SQL> declare
  2   x vc20_ttyp;
  3  begin
  4   for rec in (select * from x1) loop
  5     x := vc20_ttyp();
  6     x := tokenize(rec.x,',');
  7    
  8     for i in 1..x.COUNT loop
  9       dbms_output.put_line(nvl(x(i),'null'));
10     end loop;
11 
12   end loop;
13  
14  end;
15  /
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1
null
3
null
5
null
7
null
9
1
null
null
null
null
null
null
null
10
1
2
3
null
null
null
null
8
9
10
1
null
3
null
5
null
7
null
9
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.