Great number formatting trick

An excellent use of Oracle’s inbuilt formatting function – much simpler than parsing the input and multiple concatenation operators:

SELECT TO_CHAR(0408211234, 'FM0000G000G000','nls_numeric_characters=.-') phone from dual;

PHONE
-------------
0408-211-234

SSN formatting with TO_CHAR

Python: it’s been done before
Create Excel file from SQL query using Python

Comments

  1. Hi Jeffrey

    Your formatting trick is very clear and fine, but what to do if I want to have more complex mask based on various input strings 😉
    Please check out my query

    http://plsqlenergy.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/sql-model-clause-magic/

    • Jeffrey Kemp
      18 May 2010 - 1:31 pm

      Hi vkamys,

      I would probably use a CASE structure to select the appropriate format mask depending on the input.

      Jeff

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