Splitting a text field in columns

Question

Hello !
I want to divide a text field in two columns (like articles in newspaper). Is it possible ? How ?
Regards,
Lucian

Answer 1

Lucian,
my idea is to get the text out of the CLOB field (in my ex. column c in table t0)line by line(where you have chr(10)-new_line character) and load it into a VARCHAR2 field(v) in another table t1.
Then, in your report you can manipulate v the way you want. There you can concatenate the records again with chr(10) if you want.
To get the columns as in newspaper I would suggest to decide how many lines you want in a "column" and based on that create a repeating frame with print direction "Across" that contains one text field having the source your column.
I know it sounds a little complicated but take it step by step.
Here is the code I've tried:
create table t0 (c clob); -- you already have this
insert into t0 values ('abcd'||chr(10)||'efgh');
insert into t0 values ('ijklmn');
select * from t0;
create table t1 (v varchar2(2000));
declare
offset integer;
buffer varchar2(2000);
buflen integer ;
loblen number;
pos     number;
str     varchar2(2000);
buff varchar2(2000);
begin
for i in (select c from t0) loop
loblen := dbms_lob.getlength(i.c);
offset :=1;
dbms_lob.read(i.c, loblen, offset, buffer);
str := buffer;
loop
pos := instr(str,chr(10));
if pos = 0 or length(str)< 2 then     
     insert into t1 values (str);
exit;
else
     buff :=     substr(str,1,pos-1);
     insert into t1 values (buff);
     str := substr(str,pos+1);
end if;      
end loop;
end loop;
end;
I hope this will help you.
In caz ca te mai pot ajuta imi poti scrie la [email protected]
Mi-ar place sa tinem legatura.
Toate bune,
Monica