Can TO_NUMBER Do This?

From: Ed Bittel <ebittel_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 11:22:38 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <10602.115667@fatcity.com>

Against the repeated urging of the DBA (me), a developer insisted on creating all the numeric columns of his new appliction's tables as VARCHAR2. (Don't ask me why! I've explained it to him several times to no avail.)

Problem

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Negative values are represented in the tables with parenthesis (e.g., '(34,989.89)'). He needs to convert these character values to numeric so he can do some math.

I know you can parenthesize values when doing a TO_CHAR like this:

   select to_char(f1,'999D99PR') from test where f1=-123.45

   TO_CHAR(

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   <123.45>

However, if this doesn't appear to work with the to_number function, at least in my case.

Any ideas how to convert at string like '(1,234.87)' to a numeric value?

-Ed

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Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! Received on Mon Aug 28 2000 - 13:22:38 CDT