Could be worse - could be raining,
Replacing those awkward characters comes down to distinguishing between them
used as quotes and used to search for that character.
The sql functions ASCII() and chr() both help here:
SQL > select ascii('''') from dual;
ASCII('''')
-----------
39
The four single quotes explain that you're trying to quote a single quote. I
have to admit it's awkward, but it works. Once you know that the ascii value of
the ' character is 39, you can use it instead:
SQL > select 'O'||chr(39)||'Reilly' from dual;
'O'||CHR
--------
O'Reilly
(You could use the four-single-quotes thing, but it's clumsy.)
Finally, you can plug the ascii character value into your REPLACE statement,
something like:
SQL > select replace('O'||chr(39)||'Reilly', chr(39), '*') from dual;
REPLACE(
--------
O*Reilly
And this all works just fine, until someone decides to change their name to four
single quotes...
Anyone know a better way of coping with this kind of 'problem' data ?
Simon Anderson
>
> Gotta love Mondays,
>
> We've been through this before, and I usually don't have a problem, but
> today my brain must think it's the weekend.
>
>
> Hey, I've got a bunch of names like O'Brien and O'Reilley where I need to
> replace the ' symbol. I've tried every type of combination of single
> quotes and slashes(escape sequence) I can think of, but I must have missed
> one, because I can't get it to replace.
>
> Any Ideas? Here's the progenitor of the whole mess.
>
> 1* select replace(lastname,' ' ') from adst where lastname like 'O%'
> SQL> /
> ERROR:
> ORA-01756: quoted string not properly terminated
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