Split comma separated values to columns in Oracle

Question

I have values being returned with 255 comma separated values. Is there an easy way to split those into columns without having 255 substr?

ROW  | VAL
--------         


        

Answer 1

If you only have one row, and time to create your

• create your own built-in cto_table function to split a string on any separator, then you can use PIVOT + LISTAGG to do it like follows:

---

select * from (
  select rownum r , collection.*  
    from TABLE(cto_table(',','1.25, 3.87, 2, 19,, 1, 9, ')) collection
)
PIVOT ( 
  LISTAGG(column_value) within group (order by 1) as val 
  for r in (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
)

---

FYI: here is how to create the cto_table function:

CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE t_my_list AS TABLE OF VARCHAR2(100);
CREATE OR REPLACE
FUNCTION cto_table(p_sep in Varchar2, p_list IN VARCHAR2)
  RETURN t_my_list
AS
  l_string VARCHAR2(32767) := p_list || p_sep;
  l_sep_index PLS_INTEGER;
  l_index PLS_INTEGER := 1;
  l_tab t_my_list     := t_my_list();
BEGIN
  LOOP
    l_sep_index := INSTR(l_string, p_sep, l_index);
    EXIT
  WHEN l_sep_index = 0;
    l_tab.EXTEND;
    l_tab(l_tab.COUNT) := TRIM(SUBSTR(l_string,l_index,l_sep_index - l_index));
    l_index            := l_sep_index + 1;
  END LOOP;
  RETURN l_tab;
END cto_table;
/