Selecting 1 char at a time.

Question

So I'm trying to do a lookup on a column that has multiple values in it. For example the column could have the letters FGNC. Each one of these letters represents a country. I’m trying to find a way to read each char from the column one at a time and display the results, but I haven’t a clue as to where to start on something like this. Anyone have any ideas?

Answer 1

Maybe something like this ?
test@ORA10G>
test@ORA10G> -- iterating through the characters of a string
test@ORA10G>
test@ORA10G> with x as (
  2    select 'abracadabra' as str from dual union all
  3    select 'abcdFNGCabcd' from dual union all
  4    select 'MoulinRouge' from dual)
  5  --
  6  select t.str, substr(t.str,run.idx,1) as mod_str
  7  from (select str from x) t,
  8       (select level as idx from dual connect by level <= (select max(length(str)) from x)) run
  9  where run.idx <= length(t.str)
10  order by t.str,run.idx;
STR          M
MoulinRouge  M
MoulinRouge  o
MoulinRouge  u
MoulinRouge  l
MoulinRouge  i
MoulinRouge  n
MoulinRouge  R
MoulinRouge  o
MoulinRouge  u
MoulinRouge  g
MoulinRouge  e
abcdFNGCabcd a
abcdFNGCabcd b
abcdFNGCabcd c
abcdFNGCabcd d
abcdFNGCabcd F
abcdFNGCabcd N
abcdFNGCabcd G
abcdFNGCabcd C
abcdFNGCabcd a
abcdFNGCabcd b
abcdFNGCabcd c
abcdFNGCabcd d
abracadabra  a
abracadabra  b
abracadabra  r
abracadabra  a
abracadabra  c
abracadabra  a
abracadabra  d
abracadabra  a
abracadabra  b
abracadabra  r
abracadabra  a
34 rows selected.
test@ORA10G>
test@ORA10G>pratz