Replace functionality at specified position

Question

Hi all,
My oracle db version is 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.6.0
i am trying to find out how to perform replace operation on a varchar2 data value which has a format delimited by '-'.
fior instance my dataset can be like
a-b-c
x-y-z-d-f-g-h
ab-dvs-p-qMy replace operation should be able to replace the delimited value at specified delimited position: something like
FUNC_REPLACE('a-b-c',2,'x') => results in 'a-x-c'
FUNC_REPLACE('ab-dvs-p-q',1,'Z') => results in 'Z-dvs-p-q'I have been trying to figure this out but no real luck yet.. please help
Edited by: Chaitanya on Dec 7, 2011 12:42 AM

Answer 1

Hi,
version without reqexp, a bit faster
with tst
as (select 'a-b-c' str,      2 pos, 'x' replace_char  from dual union all
    select 'ab-dvs-p-q' str, 1 pos, 'Z' replace_char  from dual
select replace( str
               ,substr( '-'||str||'-'
                       ,instr('-'||str||'-', '-', 1, pos)+1
                       ,instr('-'||str||'-', '-', 1, pos+1)-instr('-'||str||'-', '-', 1, pos)-1
               ,replace_char
  from tst