String field value convert into Date with validation

Question

Dear all,
I need some help if someone can please?
Actually I am getting date in string format as 20110315 or 20111025 or so on. I could use to date function for this for conversion but what if 20091432 which is wrong so I can hadle this.
Actually I m using oracle 10g and using anonymous pl SQL block . Can't write function or procedure for this. So I am extracting all the data including date as above and setting some flag so if date is correct then y otherwise no. Pls help. I think I have described everything what exactly I want?
If date is correct then insert in the different table otherwise setting flag if date is not correct. I.e. bdate varchar2
Best regards,
Edited by: Irha10 on 26-Jul-2012 12:29

Answer 1

Why wouldn't you be able to use a function or procedure in your anonymous block?
SQL> declare
  2  --
  3   function is_valid_date
  4    ( p_str in varchar2
  5    , p_format in varchar2 default 'yyyymmdd'
  6    )
  7    return varchar2
  8    as
  9      dt date;
10    begin
11      dt := to_date(p_str, p_format);
12      return 'Valid';
13    exception
14      when others
15      then
16        return 'Invalid'; 
17    end;
18  --
19  begin 
20    for rec in ( select 20110315 str from dual union
21                 select 20111025 from dual union
22                 select 20091432 from dual
23               )
24            
25    loop
26      dbms_output.put_line(rec.str||'  '||is_valid_date(rec.str));
27    end loop;
28  end;
29  /
20091432  Invalid
20110315  Valid
20111025  Valid
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.Just a small example, instead of dbms_output, you could do an update of a 'Valid' column etc. etc...