Convert String to Date field for SQL Oracle - oracle

Question

I need to convert a string to a date field. The field stores 30 characters. Dates, when present, are formatted as 'yyyymmdd' (20170202). In all cases, dates have 22 spaces after. I need to format this field as a date field like this: dd-mm-yyyy.
I've tried several formulas:
TO_CHAR(PERSACTION.NEW_VALUE_02, 'dd-mm-yyyy') ,TO_CHAR(PERSACTION.NEW_VALUE_02, 'yyyymmdd'), trim(TO_CHAR(PERSACTION.NEW_VALUE_02, 'yyyymmdd')) with error message: invalid number format model. Your expertise is welcome and appreciated.

Answer 1

to_char(to_date( rtrim(new_value_02), 'yyyymmdd'), 'dd-mm-yyyy')
Should do the trick. rtrim removes spaces on right side of string. Then I convert it to date using the date format specified, and then convert it to a string again in the desired format.

Answer 2

Did tried to convert to date format and then to char again?
TO_CHAR(TO_DATE(PERSACTION.NEW_VALUE_02,'yyyymmdd'),'dd-mm-yyyy')

Answer 3

Please, please, please do not store DATEs and CHARACTER datatypes. This will only lead to issues that can be avoided when using the DATE datatype.

Answer 4

If you want to change the string 20170202 to another string and not actually a date (which would have no intrinsic formatted text representation), you could optionally use a regular expression to transform it, instead of converting to a date and back:
select regexp_replace('20170202 ', '^(\d{4})(\d{2})(\d{2}) +$', '\3-\2-\1')
from dual;
REGEXP_REPLACE(
---------------
02-02-2017
Or you could use substr instead of regexp_substr, which may perform better even if you have to call it three times; using a CTE just to avoid repeating the value:
with t(str) as (
select '20170202 ' from dual
)
select substr(str, 7, 2) ||'-'|| substr(str, 5, 2) ||'-'|| substr(str, 1, 4)
from t;
SUBSTR(STR
----------
02-02-2017
If you do convert to a date and back you would uncover any values which cannot be converted, as they will cause an exception to be thrown. That would imply you have bad data; which would have been avoided by using the right data type in the first place, of course. These will convert any old rubbish, with varying results depending on how far the strings stray from the pattern you expect - but including strings like '20170231' which represent an invalid date. And null value or strings of just spaces will be converted to odd things with the substr version, but you could filter those out.
You can see the kind of variation you would get with some sample data that doesn't match your expectations:
with t(str) as (
select '20170202 ' from dual
union all select '20170231 ' from dual
union all select '2017020c ' from dual
union all select '2017020 ' from dual
union all select '201702021 ' from dual
union all select ' ' from dual
union all select null from dual
)
select str,
regexp_replace(str, '^(\d{4})(\d{2})(\d{2}) +$', '\3-\2-\1') as reg,
substr(str, 7, 2) ||'-'|| substr(str, 5, 2) ||'-'|| substr(str, 1, 4) as sub
from t;
STR REG SUB
------------- ------------- -------------
20170202 02-02-2017 02-02-2017
20170231 31-02-2017 31-02-2017
2017020c 2017020c 0c-02-2017
2017020 2017020 0 -02-2017
201702021 201702021 02-02-2017
- -
--
With the anchors and whitespace expectation, the regular expression doesn't modify anything that doesn't consist entirely of 8 numeric characters. But it can still form invalid 'dates'.