Parsing problem

Question

Hi Guys,
Database version: 10g
Would anyone help me out?
how to parse this string 'Oct 08 2007 to Dec 14 2007 - Section 3'?
My code which does not work:
WITH T
AS
(SELECT 'Oct 08 2007 to Dec 14 2007 - Section 3' FROM dual)
          SELECT  REGEXP_SUBSTR(string,'[^t]+', 1, 2))   col1,
                      SUBSTR(REGEXP_SUBSTR(string,'to[^-]+', 1), 3))   col2
           FROM TI want -
Col1                        Col2
Oct 08 2007            Dec 14 2007Thanks

Answer 1

Hi,
You don't need regular expressions for that:
WITH     got_pos     AS
     SELECT     string
     ,     INSTR (string, ' to ')     AS to_pos
     ,     INSTR (string, '-')     AS hyphen_pos
     FROM     t
SELECT     SUBSTR ( string
            , 1
            , to_pos - 1
           )          AS col1
,     SUBSTR ( string
            , to_pos + 4
            , hyphen_pos - (to_pos + 5)
           )          AS col2
FROM     got_pos;But, if you want to use regular expressions:
SELECT     REGEXP_REPLACE ( string
                 , ' to .*'
                 )     AS col1
,     REGEXP_REPLACE ( string
                 , '.* to ([^-]+) -.*'
                 , '\1'
                 )     AS col2
FROM     t;Either of these will work (for what I think you want), even if the string contains things like 'Oct 8 2007 to December 14, 2007 - Section 3