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migrating data from a table with a varchar2 data type to a table with a column of a number data type. Any good ideas on how to do this? I know I an use the replace function (but only allows one value to be passed in at a time) and also the decode statement (gets a little hairy because of the else part, I don't have an else value to use). These don't seem to be the best options. Any ideas appreciated.
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If the data in the varchar2 column is number then oracle will automatically convert it to number.
e.g.
create table test ( x number);
insert into test values ('12');
Since oracle can convert string 12 to number 12, this should
not be problem.
However, if oracle can't convert, then it will return error
ORA-01722: invalid number
You can easily write a plsql block and catch this exception.
Sanjay
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I was able to find a consistency in the values and used the instr function along with with the substr function to strip out all of the non-numeric characters. Thanks for the reply.