instr question

kimberly.shaffer@gmail.co · *nix forums beginner Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 14

I am using oracle 9.2 and am a newbie trying to figure out the instr
argument, and just can't wrap my brain around it. Or maybe I'm going
about this the wrong way with the wrong function. Say I have a simple
statement:

select currentfield from current table;

and it brings me back something like

-m first_string next_string one_more_string last_string
-m second_string next_string one_more_string last_string
-m third_string next_string one_more_string last_string

and I just want it to look like (in my return)
first_string
second_string
third_string

and strip out all the remaining strings and the -m prefix

is that possible? Can someone example me with this so I can see where
I am going wrong?

thx in advance and apologies if this is really simple.

ks

Brian Peasland · *nix forums Guru Joined: 04 Apr 2006 Posts: 301

kimberly.shaffer@gmail.com wrote:

kimberly.shaffer@gmail.co · *nix forums beginner Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 14

Thank you Brian,

When I sort of plug in my current field and current table just to see
what results I get, I get the following error

SELECT SUBSTR(so_act_arg,INSTR(so_act_arg),' ')+1,
INSTR(so_act_arg,' ',1,2) - NSTR(so_act_arg),' ')-1)
FROM appworx.so_object_cond
WHERE so_act_arg LIKE '-m%';

FROM keyword not found where expected. What am I doing wrong?

Brian Peasland wrote:

chris.hulan@gmail.com · *nix forums beginner Joined: 10 May 2006 Posts: 13

kimberly.shaffer@gmail.com wrote:

kimberly.shaffer@gmail.co · *nix forums beginner Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 14

That worked great, thanks - I was using sqldeveloper, and my artisan is
tied up in another report, so I didn't know it was so picky with the
formatting. I'm new! But thank you. This was a very simple example
that I can sit down and wrap my brain around and I totally appreciate
you writing me back.

Try and keep cool!

me

chris.hulan@gmail.com wrote:

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