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Question and Answer

Chris Saxon

Thanks for the question.

Asked: October 31, 2018 - 3:49 pm UTC

Last updated: June 28, 2023 - 12:55 pm UTC

Version: 12.0

Viewed 10K+ times! This question is

You Asked

Haai..

i have input like this in below..

Create table Char
(
name varchar2(1000)
);

Insert all 
into Char(name) Values('Ask Tom')
into Char(name) Values('Become Again Tom')
into Char(name) Values('United Sates')
select * from dual;

Name
Ask Tom
Become Again Tom
United Sates


I need an output like below..

Name
Ask
Become
United

and Chris said...

If you want to get the first word in a string, you'll need some form of substring operation.

You can do this wtih substr + instr to find the location of the first space.

Or a regular expression to extract the letters:

with rws as (
  select 'Ask Tom' s from dual union all
  select 'Become Again Tom' s from dual union all
  select 'United Sates' s from dual 
)
  select regexp_substr ( s, '[A-z]*' ) regex,
         substr ( s, 1, instr ( s, ' ' ) - 1 ) sub
  from   rws;

REGEX    SUB      
Ask      Ask      
Become   Become   
United   United

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Comments

regex

daddy, August 09, 2022 - 12:54 pm UTC

Regex version works only on English alphabet, no "special" characters (such as "ľšč") supported.
Chris Saxon
August 09, 2022 - 1:02 pm UTC

Well that depends on the language you're using!

But yes, in general if you need to support diacritics you should use character classes instead.

nice

A reader, November 10, 2022 - 5:07 pm UTC


Try word separator \w

bias, June 27, 2023 - 6:41 am UTC

try \w : word separator
with rws as (
select 'Ask Tom' s from dual union all
select 'Become Again Tom' s from dual union all
select 'United Sates' s from dual
)
select regexp_substr ( s, '\w*' ) regex,
substr ( s, 1, instr ( s, ' ' ) - 1 ) sub
from rws;

Chris Saxon
June 27, 2023 - 12:45 pm UTC

Thanks for sharing.

lots of possibilities with "regexp" in place.

Rajeshwaran, Jeyabal, June 28, 2023 - 2:13 am UTC

Even perhaps like this 

demo@PDB1> with rws as (
  2  select 'Ask Tom' s from dual union all
  3  select 'Become Again Tom' s from dual union all
  4  select 'United Sates' s from dual
  5  )
  6  select regexp_substr( s, '\S+' ) from rws ;

REGEXP_SUBSTR(S,'\S+')
----------------------------------------------------------------
Ask
Become
United

Chris Saxon
June 28, 2023 - 12:55 pm UTC

Yes, that works too
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