substring

[Jason Hocker]

I have a column that has a values like:

ABCDEF*123456*XZY
ABC*QQQ*ZZZ
ABC*CBA*123

How can I get the middle value out using only Oracle built in functions? Someone gave me an example here that uses SUBSTR, but then uses SIGN, DECODE,INSTR, LENGTH to determine how to get that value out. I was hoping for a simplier solution.

[Mark Spritzler]

Well you need Substring, but you also need a function to figure out the start and end point of the middle section. So you find the first "*" with INSTR, and you find the second "*" with INSTR

But I don't see how you would need to other stuff. But it has been a while for me in writing that type of call, so I could be wrong.

Mark