Friday, January 11, 2013

To_Number Function


In Oracle/PLSQL, the to_number function converts a string to a number.

Syntax

The syntax for the to_number function is:
to_number( string1, [ format_mask ], [ nls_language ] )
string1 is the string that will be converted to a number.
format_mask is optional. This is the format that will be used to convert string1 to a number.
nls_language is optional. This is the nls language used to convert string1 to a number.

Applies To

  • Oracle 11g, Oracle 10g, Oracle 9i, Oracle 8i

For Example

to_number('1210.73', '9999.99')would return the number 1210.73
to_number('546', '999')would return the number 546
to_number('23', '99')would return the number 23
Since the format_mask and nls_language parameters are optional, you can simply convert a text string to a numeric value as follows:
to_number('1210.73')would return the number 1210.73