Comments on: SQL Function Spotlight: TRIM

By: Eddie Awad

Eddie Awad — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:42:35 +0000

Thanks Brian. By the way, nice use of the DUMP function.

By: Brian Tkatch

Brian Tkatch — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:52:59 +0000

So, TRIM and TO_CHAR seem the same by a DATE:

SELECT TRIM(SysDate), DUMP(TRIM(SysDate)) FROM Dual UNION ALL SELECT TO_CHAR(SysDate), DUMP(TO_CHAR(SysDate)) FROM Dual;

05-SEP-08 Typ=1 Len=9: 48,53,45,83,69,80,45,48,56 05-SEP-08 Typ=1 Len=9: 48,53,45,83,69,80,45,48,56

TRUNC, however, leaves it as a DATE, which is possible the best way to remove the time.

SELECT SysDate, DUMP(SysDate) FROM Dual UNION ALL SELECT TRUNC(SysDate), DUMP(TRUNC(SysDate)) FROM Dual;

05-SEP-08 Typ=13 Len=8: 216,7,9,5,8,51,44,0 05-SEP-08 Typ=13 Len=8: 216,7,9,5,0,0,0,0

By: Eddie Awad

Eddie Awad — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 23:27:35 +0000

Hmm! What is the difference between trim(sysdate) and to_char(sysdate)?

By: Mathias Magnusson

Mathias Magnusson — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:25:27 +0000

I like using trim on dates. I have seen many elaborate ways of converting to char to remove it and then convert back to date. Using trim seems to be the slick way to just remove the time (making it zero).

By: Eddie Awad

Eddie Awad — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:27:01 +0000

Indeed, if you want to trim more than one character on either or both ends of a string, TRIM is not the function to use.

By: Laurent Schneider

Laurent Schneider — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 05:35:50 +0000

there is one major advantage of using ltrim (rtrim), with ltrim you can skip any character from a range, with trim the character is a single character !

SQL> select ltrim('elcaroracle','racle') from dual

LTRIM(
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oracle