LOL! I have that function, and in fact I believe I wrote pretty much the same thing about 10 years ago. Just forgot about it. IAC, I didn't try it, though I suspect it will be slower than the others. I'll try it for comparison. On Jan 25, 2008 8:41 AM, Niall Litchfield <niall.litchfield@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Interesting indeed. I've always used the is_numeric function (and possibly > indexed the column on it.) > > What's that I hear you say? You mean you don't have an is_numeric function > available. > Mine reads > > create or replace function is_numeric(p_stringval in varchar2) return > number > is > l_numval number; > begin > l_numval := to_number(p_stringval); > return 1; > exception > when others then > return 0; > end is_numeric; > / > > I've never done the runstats thing though. > On Jan 25, 2008 4:11 PM, Jared Still <jkstill@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > > This week I found it necessary to differentiate between strings that > > were composed of numeric data and those that were alphanumeric. > > > > This was kind of fun an interesting. > > > > It was also too long to post here, so I put it on my blog. > > > > http://jkstill.blogspot.com/ if you're interested. > > > > > > -- > > Jared Still > > Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist > > > > > > -- > Niall Litchfield > Oracle DBA > http://www.orawin.info -- Jared Still Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist