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Regular express in Oracle

I wanted to test a regular expression for post code validation against some real data. I have a list of postcodes from ONS in a database. I had an option to write a small vb program to query the database and then test each value against the regular express and then report pass or fail.

But then I thought let see if Oracle provides some support for regular expression in the query.

Eureka!!!

Here it is to test a column against a regular expression....

SELECT zip
FROM zipcode
WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(zip, '[^[:digit:]]')

The above query will bring all records matching the RE.

For more details, visit http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/webcolumns/2003/techarticles/rischert_regexp_pt1.html

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