I am getting a string in the below format after reading data from a csv file
v_lastline = '29218368,8062115," Benedict Canyon Equities, Inc",CLS,,FAX';
I just want to convert it into an array while will contain 6 values, the comma before the , Inc needs to be escaped. Can any one please suggest whats the best way to do it in PL/SQL?
This is similar to this question, but you have empty elements in your list; and a simple translation of one of the patterns I tried there skips those:
var v_lastline varchar2(50); exec :v_lastline := '29218368,8062115," Benedict Canyon Equities, Inc",CLS,,FAX'; select level as lvl, regexp_substr(:v_lastline, '("[^"]*"|[^,]+)', 1, level) as element from dual connect by level If you can identify a special character that will never appear in the data then you can work around that by putting that into the empty elements by changing every comma to comma+character, and then removing it after the split:
select level as lvl, replace(regexp_substr(replace(:v_lastline, ',', ',§'), '(§"[^"]*"|[^,]+)', 1, level), '§', null) as element from dual connect by regexp_substr(replace(:v_lastline, ',', ',§'), '(§"[^"]*"|[^,]+)', 1, level) is not null; LVL ELEMENT ---------- ---------------------------------------- 1 29218368 2 8062115 3 " Benedict Canyon Equities, Inc" 4 CLS 5 6 FAX It's an extension of a common method to split delimited strings, which is explained in detail here.
replace(:v_lastline, ',', ',§') changes ...,CLS,,FAX to ...,§CLS,§,§FAX, where § is a character you'll never see.regexp_substr(..., '(§"[^"]*"|[^,]+)', 1, level) tokenises the updated value with a regex that looks for any double-quote-enclosed value (now preceded by the special character too) or a non-comma; the order of the evaluation means commas inside the quoted part are ignored.level is part of the hierarchical query syntax, where:connect by regexp_substr() is not null just figured out how many tokens there are.replace(regexp_substr(...), , '§', null) removes the special character used in the first step.You can then remove the double-quotes too with a further level of replace(), and trim whitespace, if you want/need to.
You have't said quite what you mean by an array, but you can run that query in PL/SQL and bulk-collect into a collection if that's what you intend to work with. For example, using the built-in ODCIVARCHAR2LIST collection type:
set serveroutput on declare v_lastline varchar2(50); v_array sys.odcivarchar2list; begin v_lastline := '29218368,8062115," Benedict Canyon Equities, Inc",CLS,,FAX'; select trim(replace(replace( regexp_substr(replace(:v_lastline, ',', ',§'), '(§"[^"]*"|[^,]+)', 1, level), '§', null), '"', null)) bulk collect into v_array from dual connect by regexp_substr(replace(:v_lastline, ',', ',§'), '(§"[^"]*"|[^,]+)', 1, level) is not null; dbms_output.put_line('Number of elements: ' || v_array.count); for i in 1..v_array.count loop dbms_output.put_line('Index ' || i || ' has: ' || v_array(i)); end loop; end; / Number of elements: 6 Index 1 has: 29218368 Index 2 has: 8062115 Index 3 has: Benedict Canyon Equities, Inc Index 4 has: CLS Index 5 has: Index 6 has: FAX With multiple empty elements this also (now) works:
exec :v_lastline := '29218368,8062115," Benedict Canyon Equities, Inc",,,,,,,CLS,,,,,FAX,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,INVOICE'; select level as lvl, replace(regexp_substr(replace(:v_lastline, ',', ',§'), '(§"[^"]*"|[^,]+)', 1, level), '§', null) as element from dual connect by regexp_substr(replace(:v_lastline, ',', ',§'), '(§"[^"]*"|[^,]+)', 1, level) is not null; LVL ELEMENT ---------- ---------------------------------------- 1 29218368 2 8062115 3 " Benedict Canyon Equities, Inc" 4 ... 9 10 CLS 11 ... 14 15 FAX 16 ... 32 33 INVOICE If the structure of your CSV if fixed, you can try with something like this:
with text(text) as ( select '29218368,8062115," Benedict Canyon Equities, Inc",CLS,,FAX' from dual) select level, trim(',' from case when level in (1,2) then regexp_substr(text, '(.*??)\,', 1, level) when level = 3 then regexp_substr(text, '"(.*??)"', 1, 1) when level in (4,5) then regexp_substr(text, '(.*??)\,', instr(text, '"', 1, 2), level -2) when level = 6 then regexp_substr(text, '\,([^\,]*)', instr(text, '"', 1, 2), 3) end ) from text connect by level This makes strong assumptions on the structure of CSV, by treating each part in a different way, but it seems to me difficult to find a really generic solution to the problem.
Here is a solution without regular expressions, first of all create two helper functions
/* CAR select car('hello,world,bla') from dual --> hello */ create or replace function car(PI_STR in varchar2, PI_SEPARATOR in varchar2 default ',') return varchar2 is l_pos number; begin l_pos := instr(PI_STR, PI_SEPARATOR); if l_pos > 0 then return substr(PI_STR, 1, l_pos - 1); end if; return PI_STR; end; /* CDR select cdr('hello,world,bla') from dual --> world,bla */ create or replace function cdr(PI_STR in varchar2, PI_SEPARATOR in varchar2 default ',') return varchar2 is l_pos number; begin l_pos := instr(PI_STR, PI_SEPARATOR); if l_pos > 0 then return substr(PI_STR, l_pos + length(PI_SEPARATOR)); end if; return ''; end; now: extract by ',' and for each result concat with next entry if escape character is found upto next escape character:
create or replace type csv_col is table of varchar2(4000); create or replace function get_columns(PI_STR in varchar2, PI_SEPARATOR in varchar2, PI_ESC_CHAR in varchar2) return csv_col pipelined is l_car varchar2(4000); l_cdr varchar2(4000); l_car_esc varchar2(4000); begin l_car := car(PI_STR, PI_SEPARATOR); l_cdr := cdr(PI_STR, PI_SEPARATOR); -- check for escape char l_car_esc := cdr(l_car, PI_ESC_CHAR); if l_car_esc is not null then l_car := l_car_esc || PI_SEPARATOR || car(l_cdr, PI_ESC_CHAR); l_cdr := cdr(cdr(l_cdr, PI_ESC_CHAR), PI_SEPARATOR); end if; loop if l_car is null and l_cdr is null then exit; end if; pipe row(l_car); l_car := car(l_cdr, PI_SEPARATOR); l_cdr := cdr(l_cdr, PI_SEPARATOR); l_car_esc := cdr(l_car, PI_ESC_CHAR); if l_car_esc is not null then l_car := l_car_esc || PI_SEPARATOR || car(l_cdr, PI_ESC_CHAR); l_cdr := cdr(cdr(l_cdr, PI_ESC_CHAR), PI_SEPARATOR); dbms_output.put_line(l_car); dbms_output.put_line(l_cdr); end if; end loop; end; call it like this:
select * from table(get_columns('29218368,8062115," Benedict Canyon Equities, Inc",CLS,,FAX', ',', '"')); --> result
29218368 8062115 Benedict Canyon Equities, Inc CLS FAX