Re: SQL Function

According to "Programming in PL/SQL" of Feuerstein, the program mentioned below is not only the most accurate but also the fastest one. The program given there looks exactly like this one and it's perhaps worth noting that in the book there is a rather complete discussion of many alternative ways of doing a similar task along with their benchmarks.

I think you should pick this one.

Flavio

"Daniel Morgan" <dmorgan_at_exesolutions.com> wrote in message news:3CCD7138.5FEF4BF5_at_exesolutions.com...
> Prasad Yarlagadda wrote:
>
> > Is there any standard SQL function available to check whether an array
of
> > characters is a String or a Number? I am looking for something like
> > IS_NUMBER or IS_CHARACTER. I don't want to write a function for it if
oracle
> > has already provided.
> >
> > TIA,
> > Prasad
>
> No. This must be done in a PL/SQL block such as the following:
>
> BEGIN
> test := TO_NUMBER(somevalue);
> <do something>
> EXCEPTION
> WHEN OTHERS THEN
> <do something else>
> END;
>
> If you don't do it this way you need to be very careful about what you
decide is
> a number. For example ... is 8.1.7.3 a number? It would be with a lot of
code
> I've seen written.
>
> Daniel Morgan
>
Received on Tue Apr 30 2002 - 17:33:09 CDT