Labels:text | screenshot | font | document | number | parallel OCR: Name Description ASCII Returns the ASCII code of a character. Useful in identifying non-printing characters in a string. CHR Returns the character associated with the specified collating code. I use this function to add new-line characters - CHR(10) - to strings. CONCAT Concatenates two strings into one. PL/SQL also offers the double vertical bars ( | | ) as a concatenation operator, a more flexible and useful approach to concatenation. I do not use CONCAT. INITCAP Sets the first letter of each word to upper-case. All other letters are set to lower-case. Comes in handy for reports, but is not sophisticated enough to know that INITCAP ('MCDONALD') is not 'Mcdonald'. INSTR Returns the location in a string of the specified sub string. With this handy function you can specify the starting position and Nth appearance of the sub-string. You can even search backwards through the string. LENGTH Returns the length of a string. Just remember that LENGTH (NULL) is NULL; it's not zero. In fact, LENGTH will never return 0. LOWER Converts all letters to lower-case. LPAD Pads a string on the left with the specified characters. You can pad with blanks or any other string. LTRIM Trims the left side of a string of all specified characters. You can trim blanks (the default) or you can provide a set of characters all of which you want to make disappear. REPLACE Replaces a character sequence in a string with a different set of characters. REPLACE performs pattern-matching search and replaces. RPAD Pads a string on the right with the specified characters. You can pad with blanks or any other string. RTRIM Trims the right side of a string of all specified characters. You can trim blanks (the default) or you can provide a set of characters all of which you want to make disappear. SOUNDEX. Returns the "soundex" of a string. Uses the Knuth algorithm. SUBSTR Returns the specified portion of a string. A very useful function, SUBSTR can also scan from the end of the string to find its starting position. TRANSLATE Translates single characters in a string to different characters. It does not perform pattern-matching like REPLACE. Instead it simply replaces the nth character in the search list with the nth character in the replace list. UPPER Converts all letters in the string to upper-case.
