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

[bsuroop]

Originally posted by 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.

Thanks shivagami,
but I am not able to get the correct output.can you pls show me how it works by using the decode.
For instance samantha Mary - it should display the initial as SM
but as per the above query it is displaying only S

Thanks a lot
Kishan