Using trunc in oracle

Question

I get this error message saying literal does not match format string every time i type in the simple query below
select trunc(t1.transaction_date) from table_done t1
where trunc(t1.transaction_date, 'YYYY-MM-DD') < '2006-01-01'
and trunc(t1.transaction_date, 'YYYY-MM-DD')>= '2006-12-31';
Kindly note, the main reason, I am doing a trunc is because the date in the table contains hours and mins and I only want to get the years, month and day as string charater for a particular range. Thank you.
I am still new to oracle. thank you

Answer 1

Is t1.transaction_date already a DATE data type? If so all you need to do is apply the TRUNC() function with only the column as the argument which will remove the hour, minute and second components. It looks like some of your post got cut off so I'll guess at what it should be.
SELECT TRUNC(t1.transaction_date)
FROM   table_done t1
WHERE  trunc(t1.transaction_date) BETWEEN TO_DATE('2006-01-01','YYYY-MM-DD') AND TO_DATE('2006-12-31','YYYY-MM-DD')Additionally you shouldn't compare dates to strings as you have done. Always convert the strings to DATEs if you want to compare dates.
If t1.transaction_date isn't a DATE (always store DATEs as DATEs not strings!) then you'll need to apply the TO_DATE() function.