Re: Bring back non Characters

From: Mark D Powell <Mark.Powell_at_eds.com>
Date: 2 Jun 2006 11:17:09 -0700
Message-ID: <1149272229.465262.182660@c74g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>

Mark C. Stock wrote:
> "PW" <wupeiyi2_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1149265067.329173.170810_at_y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> : Hi Experts,
> : I am trying to bring back a couple million records that have a field
> : SURNAME.
> : But some of them are obviously not surnames(e.g. numbers, dates, other
> : stuff).
> : Does anyone know how I can bring back the ones that don't start with a
> : character(alpha)?
> :
> : Thanks,
> : Peiyi
> :
>
> depends to a degree on your version of oracle
>
> you've got trim, replace, translate, instr, substr functions, case and
> regular expressions that can use to implement your algorithm
>
> ++ mcs

Peiyi, records and fields exist in OS files. In Oracle we deal with tables, rows, and columns. Which are you dealing with?

If you are working in Oracle then here are a couple of hints: substr(col, 1,1) < 'A'
instr(col,'/') > 0

HTH -- Mark D Powell -- Received on Fri Jun 02 2006 - 13:17:09 CDT