Oracle Date TO_CHAR('Month DD, YYYY') has extra spaces in it

Question

When I do...

Select TO_CHAR (date_field, \'Month DD, YYYY\')
from...

I get the following:

July      01, 2011
April     01,          


        

Answer 1

SQL> -- original . . .
SQL> select
  2  to_char( sysdate, 'Day "the" Ddth "of" Month, yyyy' ) dt
  3  from dual;

DT
----------------------------------------
Friday    the 13th of May      , 2016

SQL>
SQL> -- collapse repeated spaces . . .
SQL> select
  2  regexp_replace(
  3      to_char( sysdate, 'Day "the" Ddth "of" Month, yyyy' ),
  4      '  * *', ' ') datesp
  5  from dual;

DATESP
----------------------------------------
Friday the 13th of May , 2016

SQL>
SQL> -- and space before commma . . .
SQL> select
  2  regexp_replace(
  3      to_char( sysdate, 'Day "the" Ddth "of" Month, yyyy' ),
  4      '  *(,*) *', '\1 ') datesp
  5  from dual;

DATESP
----------------------------------------
Friday the 13th of May, 2016

SQL>
SQL> -- space before punctuation . . .
SQL> select
  2  regexp_replace(
  3      to_char( sysdate, 'Day "the" Ddth "of" Month, yyyy' ),
  4      '  *([.,/:;]*) *', '\1 ') datesp
  5  from dual;

DATESP
----------------------------------------
Friday the 13th of May, 2016