SQL error “ORA-01722: invalid number”

Question

A very easy one for someone, The following insert is giving me the

ORA-01722: invalid number

why?

INSERT INTO C         


        

Answer 1

The ORA-01722 error is pretty straightforward. According to Tom Kyte:

We've attempted to either explicity or implicity convert a character string to a number and it is failing.

However, where the problem is is often not apparent at first. This page helped me to troubleshoot, find, and fix my problem. Hint: look for places where you are explicitly or implicitly converting a string to a number. (I had NVL(number_field, 'string') in my code.)