ORACLE/PLSQL: TEST A STRING FOR A NUMERIC VALUE

Question: In Oracle, I want to know if a string value is numeric only. How can I do this?

Answer: To test a string for numeric characters, you could use a combination of the LENGTH function, TRIM function, and TRANSLATE function built into Oracle.

You can use the following command:

LENGTH(TRIM(TRANSLATE(string1, ' +-.0123456789', ' ')))

string1 is the string value that you are testing

This function will return a null value if string1 is numeric. It will return a value "greater than 0" if string1 contains any non-numeric characters.

For example,