RE: Regular Expression confusion

From: Reidy, Ron <Ron.Reidy_at_arraybiopharma.com>
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 14:18:48 -0600
Message-ID: <17CAB0BF27BCFC47B0E4554A0E2F962B4395AD@fiji.arraybp.com>

Can you say something like "upper(regex_replace(name, '[:punct;]' ..."?

Ron Reidy
Lead DBA
Array BioPharma, Inc.
303.386.1480

-----Original Message-----

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org]On Behalf Of William B Ferguson Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 2:13 PM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Regular Expression confusion

I'm getting confused on regular expressions (Oracle 10.1.0.4). I want to strip all punctuation from a user supplied input string except for the = '%'
wildcard character. To see if my formatting of the syntax was correct, I wrote the following sql statement:

SQL> set escape off
SQL> select UPPER(regexp_replace(name,'[''''|"|;| |-|,|.]')) test_data 2 from names
3 where upper(regexp_replace(name,'[[:punct:][:space:]]')) 4 like ('%JGO%');

TEST_DATA

A-JGOLDMININGCO
AJGOLDMINE
AJGOLDMININGCO
AJGOLDMININGCO
AJGOLDMININGCO
EJGOGGINSPROSPECT
JJGORDONQUARRY 7 rows selected.

Not quite what I wanted, as a hyphen still appears.

So, I tried escaping the hyphen:
SQL> select UPPER(regexp_replace(name,'[''''|"|;| |\-|,|.]')) test_data 2 from names
3 where upper(regexp_replace(name,'[[:punct:][:space:]]')) 4 like ('%JGO%');

TEST_DATA

A-JGMC
AJGM
AJGMC
AJGMC
AGMC
EJGP
JGQ 7 rows selected.

Definitely not what I wanted! So, I figured I'd try adding an extra set = of
brackets (like the second regexp_replace uses):

SQL> select UPPER(regexp_replace(name,'[[''''|"|;| |\-|,|.]]'))=20 SQL> test_data
2 from names
3 where upper(regexp_replace(name,'[[:punct:][:space:]]')) 4 like ('%JGO%');

TEST_DATA

A-J GOLD MINING CO

A. J. GOLD MINE
A. J. GOLD MINING CO.
A.J. GOLD MINING CO.

AJ GOLD MINING CO.
E J GOGGINS PROSPECT
JJ GORDON QUARRY 7 rows selected.

That had the effect of negating what I wanted to accomplish in the first place! I might as well have just selected name.

And if I changed the first regexp_replace to UPPER(regexp_replace(name,'[''''|"|;| |'-'|,|.]')), Then I get an ORA-01722 invalid number.

How do I modify my first regexp_replace to also strip out the hyphen = while
allowing the '%' wildcard, unlike the :punct: class?

Bill Ferguson
U.S. Geological Survey - Minerals Information Team PO Box 25046, MS-750
Denver, Colorado 80225
Voice (303)236-8747 ext. 321 Fax (303)236-4208
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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l Received on Wed Apr 20 2005 - 16:21:31 CDT