Where clause with substr for a update statement

Question

Dear Reader,
Currently I am working on a package that will update a value in a column, this column always has a default value of 9999 and is named STATUS_FLAGS
In my package I need to update this column's value for instance into 9919. Where 1 represents a specific extraction run and 9 represents non-ran records.
Currently I have the following code (which does not work):
IF run = 'somevalue' THEN
-- The flag string: 9999 where 9 = xx, 9 = xxx, 9 = xxxx, 9 = etc
UPDATE TABLE.STATUS_FLAGS
SET TABLE.STATUS_FLAGS = 1 || substr(TABLE.STATUS_FLAGS,1,4)
WHERE SUBSTR(TABLE.STATUS_FLAGS,2,3) <> '1';
END IF;
Could you please help me to tell me what I am doing wrong and how I should do it?
Thanks a lot.
Edited by: user3542281 on Jan 6, 2009 5:31 AM

Answer 1

I'm really not sure what you're after - you're saying that my method works correctly and that yours doesn't. So, why aren't you using my method?
Perhaps you should give us more information about your situation, such as your starting set of data and the updates you'll be doing.
Or perhaps you want a more generalised version, such as:
update table t
set t.status_flags = substr(t.status_flags, 1, p_position_to_update-1)||'1'||substr(t.status_flags, p_position_to_update+1);where p_position_to_update is a parameter that's passed in (or a variable set in the procedure)