Search for a value in the string.

Question

Hi,
I have an issue with my table data.
I have a lot of junk values like 'AAA', 'BBB', 'CCC' etc....
So Now, Can I have a regular expression string or a query which would generalise my requirement of cleansing these values in the first name and last name columns of my table??
I use Oracle 11G as my development Box.
Any help would be appreciated..

Answer 1

something to play with (I'm not a heavy regexp user so bear with me)
select :your_string dirty,
       regexp_replace(upper(:your_string),
                            '(A{3,}|B{3,}|C{3,}|D{3,}|E{3,}|F{3,}|G{3,}|H{3,}|I{3,}|J{3,}|K{3,}|L{3,}|M{3,}|N{3,}|O{3,}|P{3,}|Q{3,}|R{3,}|S{3,}|T{3,}|U{3,}|V{3,}|W{3,}|X{3,}|Y{3,}|Z{3,}|_{3,})+',
                           ) clean
  from dualrecursive with might be more efficient
with
cleaner(k,x,n) as
(select 0 k,'' x,'aaaaabcccccdaaaae' n
   from dual 
union all
select k+1,
        x || case when length(n) - length(ltrim(n,substr(n,1,1))) < 3
                  then lpad(substr(n,1,1),length(n) - length(ltrim(n,substr(n,1,1))),substr(n,1,1))
             end,
        ltrim(n,substr(n,1,1))
   from cleaner
  where n is not null
select x
  from (select n,x || case when length(lead(n) over (order by k desc)) < 3
                           then lead(n) over (order by k desc)
                      end x
          from cleaner
where n is nullRegards
Etbin