Removing non-alphanumeric characters

Question

Hello,
New to Oracle (not so new to SQL) and this is my first post ... please be kind :-)
Anyway, I have a variable length string that I would like to separate into separate rows/columns. the structure is as follows:
|G^7130^R|C^7130^R|G^7131^R|C^7131^R|G^9900^R|C^9950^R|C^9951^R
... the leading alpha following the pipe is required in a column as is the numeric that follow. I have tried ...
REGEXP_REPLACE(string, '[^[:digit:]]',',') which gave me ...
,,,7130,,,,,7130,,,,,7131,,,,,7131,,,,,9900,,,,,9950,,,,,9951,,
..wrong...
I am trying to produce ..
code value
G 7130
C 7130
etc
Anyway any help would be appreciated .... and yes I am going through the literature as fast as I can ... well at least as fast as I can comprehend.
Thanks.
A

Answer 1

I am seeking some assistance on the implemenation of the above solution. I have modified the query (below) and am unsure of why the performance is so poor (no crticism to the contributers). When I run the Explain Plan against the SQL the total cost is very low (<50) ... yet when I run the query it does not return within hours (I cancel the process). Does anyone have any advice on this one? I have to be missing something here. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Regards,
Al
Additional Info
-the largest table (request) has ~2.6 million rows the others <5000
-request index is:
ALL_DONE
REQNO
LABNO
-for the query below the set to be considered (pre-parsing) is only 171 rows. The first 50 come back in seconds but when I fetch the rest it does not return
select
distinct
rsl.ReqNo,
rsl.LabNo as RSL_Labno,
td.labno as DeptLabno,
td.dept,
case
when td.dept=1 then 'C'
when td.dept=2 then 'H'
when td.dept=3 then 'M'
when td.dept=4 then 'I'
when td.dept=5 then 'P'
when td.dept=6 then 'BB'
when td.dept=7 then 'R'
when td.dept=7 then 'MD'
end as Dept2,
ld.ldptname,
rsl.code,
rsl.test_code,
tm.alf_key,
tm.short_desc,
tm.text,
tm.end_date,
tm.orderable
from
with t1 as
(select
r.reqno as ReqNo,
r.labno as LabNo,
ti.tests as str
from
request r,
testinfo ti
where 1=1
and r.labno=11
and r.all_done = 0
and r.sp_dt>'01-JUN-08'
and r.reqno is not null
and r.reqno= ti.reqno
and r.labno= ti.labno),
t2 as
(select
regexp_substr(str,'[^|]+',1,level) sub_str,
ReqNo,
LabNo
from t1
connect by level<=nvl(length(regexp_replace(str,'[^|]')),1))
select
ReqNo,
LabNo,
substr(sub_str,1,1) code,
regexp_substr(sub_str,'[[:digit:]]+') test_code
from t2
rsl,
testmaster tm,
testdept td,
ldpt ld
where
1=1
and tm.test=rsl.test_code
and tm.test=td.test
and rsl.Labno=td.labno
and ld.labno=td.labno
and ld.dept=td.dept
and tm.end_date='31-DEC-49'
and td.end_date='31-DEC-49'
order by ReqNo, test_code asc;