Split varchar into separate columns in Oracle

Question

I\'m in a bit of a pickle: I\'ve been asked to take in comments starting with a specific string from a database, and separate the result into separate columns.

For

Answer 1

With REGEXP_SUBSTR is as simple as:

SELECT REGEXP_SUBSTR(t.column_one, '[^ ]+', 1, 1) col_one,
       REGEXP_SUBSTR(t.column_one, '[^ ]+', 1, 2) col_two
FROM YOUR_TABLE t;

Answer 2

Simple way is to convert into column

SELECT COLUMN_VALUE FROM TABLE (SPLIT ('19869,19572,19223,18898,10155,'))

CREATE TYPE split_tbl as TABLE OF VARCHAR2(32767);

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION split (p_list VARCHAR2, p_del VARCHAR2 := ',')
   RETURN split_tbl
   PIPELINED IS
   l_idx PLS_INTEGER;
   l_list VARCHAR2 (32767) := p_list;
   l_value VARCHAR2 (32767);
BEGIN
   LOOP
      l_idx := INSTR (l_list, p_del);

      IF l_idx > 0 THEN
         PIPE ROW (SUBSTR (l_list, 1, l_idx - 1));
         l_list := SUBSTR (l_list, l_idx + LENGTH (p_del));
      ELSE
         PIPE ROW (l_list);
         EXIT;
      END IF;
   END LOOP;

   RETURN;
END split;

Answer 3

Depends on the consistency of the data - assuming a single space is the separator between what you want to appear in column one vs two:

SELECT SUBSTR(t.column_one, 1, INSTR(t.column_one, ' ')-1) AS col_one,
       SUBSTR(t.column_one, INSTR(t.column_one, ' ')+1) AS col_two
  FROM YOUR_TABLE t

Oracle 10g+ has regex support, allowing more flexibility depending on the situation you need to solve. It also has a regex substring method...

Reference:

• SUBSTR
• INSTR