How to get the substring value from a column with data?

[bsuroop]

Hi Friends,
How to get the substring value from a column with data?

Example
-------

Names Initials
----- --------
MTOLISI
FERNANDO
MAKGATLISHA SWARTBOOI
SIVENGI
T A
SAMANTHA MARY

I need to populate the initials column by taking the first character from the Names field
My Initials column should be as below

Initials
--------
M
F
MS
S
T A
SM

Thanks Guys,
Kishan

[Srinivas_Sharma]

select substr(names,1,1) initials from tablename

[ddrozdov]

SELECT
substr(fullnames,1,1)||substr(fullnames,instr(fullnames,' ')+1,1) initials
FROM
names

[rshivagami]

select substr(names,1,1) || substr(names, instr(names,' ')+1,1) from tablename;

You might want to add a decode before the second concatenation to check if there is a space.

[ddrozdov]

Decode not necessary. Who cares?

[DaPi]

translate(initcap(column),
'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',
'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ')
Will deal with any number of names - but I feel there must be a neater way . . .

[ddrozdov]

DaPi, you so sneaky!
I might use this trick somewhere.

[DaPi]

Watch out for names like "Hervé Niño 13th" it'll need some adjusting!

[oracle_faq]

Or maybe just use the upper to make everything uppercase.

[jmodic]

Originally posted by oracle_faq
Or maybe just use the upper to make everything uppercase.

How would that help?