Problem increasing dates with REGEXP_REPLACE and TO_DATE

Question

Hello all,
i'm trying to increase dates in a string with a single statement, but i ran into the problem that Oracle doesn't interpret the regex backtrace operators when they are used in TO_DATE:
SELECT
  REGEXP_REPLACE(
    'Test: 01.01.2001 Test: 02.02.2002',
    '([0-9]{2})\.([0-9]{2})\.([0-9]{4})',
    TO_CHAR(TO_DATE('\1\2\3', 'DDMMYYYY') + 1, 'DD.MM.YYYY')
FROM DUALLeads to a ORA-01858: 01858, 00000, "a non-numeric character was found where a numeric was expected".
However, using other functions on the backtrace operators like UPPER('\1') works like a charm. Is this a limitation of the TO_DATE function?
Is there any possibility to replace the dates in a small, simple statement?
Thanks in advance,
-sd

Answer 1

How should I show you an example, when it's simply
not possible? I know I mixed up parameters and
callbacks mistakenly and took the wrong approach.Ok. In your last post, you've added a question mark, so
it did look as you weren't aware of the problem.
However, I thought there was some possibility in
Oracle regex to apply a callback function to
regex-replacement like other languages have
(preg_replace_callback in PHP for example) like:Interesting. Unfortunately PL/SQL is not PHP and there's
(yet) no callback feature implemented.
FUNCTION chg_date(
p_string
REGEXP_REPLACE_CALLBACK('Test: 2001', '[0-9]{4}',
'chg_date')
...I too miss the possibility to extend the use of backtrace
parameters, maybe in one of the future versions.
C.