Diagnostic Query to avoid ORA-01722 Error

I have a utility that selects the maximum value from a VARCHAR2 column. Obviously, if there is a non-numeric value in the column I encounter the expected an ORA-01722 error.

Is there a "select count(*)" query I can use to first identify if non-numeric values exist in the column? I could then issue this diagnostic query before issuing my query for the maximum value? If the column has non-numeric values in it, I can skip selecting the maximum value from the column.

Wth thanks Received on Thu Sep 26 2002 - 12:27:20 CDT