Skip to Main Content
  • Questions

  • Select range of strings between two other strings

Breadcrumb

XMAS_TREE

The AskTOM team is taking a break over the holiday season, so we're not taking questions or responding to comments. Please have a happy and safe festive season and as always, thanks for being a member of the AskTOM community.

Question and Answer

Tom Kyte

Thanks for the question, Yuri.

Asked: November 26, 2014 - 9:06 am UTC

Last updated: November 26, 2014 - 4:53 pm UTC

Version: 11.2.0

Viewed 10K+ times! This question is

You Asked

Hi, Tom.
I need to create a bulk of serial numbers in one of my tables and for that I want to create a stored procedure. I want to pass first SN and last SN and the procedure to return all the SN in between these two.
How can I do that without using loops?
For example I pass to the procedure '300RASEL0000000671000001' and '300RASEL0000000671000010' and should get the following:
'300RASEL0000000671000001'
'300RASEL0000000671000002'
'300RASEL0000000671000003'
...
'300RASEL0000000671000010'

Thank you in advance

and Tom said...

You don't need a stored procedure :)

A simple select will do it


ops$tkyte%ORA11GR2> variable s varchar2(30)
ops$tkyte%ORA11GR2> variable e varchar2(30)
ops$tkyte%ORA11GR2> 
ops$tkyte%ORA11GR2> exec :s := '300RASEL0000000671000001'

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

ops$tkyte%ORA11GR2> exec :e := '300RASEL0000000671000010'

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

ops$tkyte%ORA11GR2> 
ops$tkyte%ORA11GR2> select substr( :s, 1, 18 ) || to_char( to_number( substr( :s, 19 ) )+level-1, 'fm000000' )
  2    from dual
  3  connect by level <= to_number( substr( :e, 19 ) )-to_number( substr( :s, 19 ) )+1
  4  /

SUBSTR(:S,1,18)||TO_CHAR(
-------------------------
300RASEL0000000671000001
300RASEL0000000671000002
300RASEL0000000671000003
300RASEL0000000671000004
300RASEL0000000671000005
300RASEL0000000671000006
300RASEL0000000671000007
300RASEL0000000671000008
300RASEL0000000671000009
300RASEL0000000671000010

10 rows selected.


or using the "newer" recursive with clause:

ops$tkyte%ORA11GR2> with data (sn)
  2  as
  3  ( select to_number( substr( :s, 19 ) ) sn from dual
  4    union all
  5    select sn+1 from data where sn <= to_number( substr( :e, 19 ) )-to_number( substr( :s, 19 ) )
  6  )
  7  select substr( :s, 1, 18 ) || to_char( sn, 'fm000000' )
  8    from data
  9  /

SUBSTR(:S,1,18)||TO_CHAR(
-------------------------
300RASEL0000000671000001
300RASEL0000000671000002
300RASEL0000000671000003
300RASEL0000000671000004
300RASEL0000000671000005
300RASEL0000000671000006
300RASEL0000000671000007
300RASEL0000000671000008
300RASEL0000000671000009
300RASEL0000000671000010

10 rows selected.

Rating

  (1 rating)

We're not taking comments currently, so please try again later if you want to add a comment.

Comments

Great

Yuri Mayorov, November 27, 2014 - 6:39 am UTC

Tom,
thank you so much! That's a great solution
more

Connor and Chris don't just spend all day on AskTOM. You can also catch regular content via Connor's blog and Chris's blog. Or if video is more your thing, check out Connor's channel and Chris's channel from their Youtube channels. And of course, keep up to date with AskTOM via the official twitter account.

More to Explore

PL/SQL demos

Check out more PL/SQL tutorials on our LiveSQL tool.

PL/SQL docs

PL/SQL reference manual from the Oracle documentation library