Trim Whitespaces (New Line and Tab space) in a String in Oracle

Question

I need to trim New Line (Chr(13) and Chr(10) and Tab space from the beginning and end of a String) in an Oracle query. I learnt that there is no easy way to trim multiple charac

Answer 1

TRIM(BOTH chr(13)||chr(10)||' ' FROM str)

Answer 2

You could use both LTRIM and RTRIM.

select rtrim(ltrim('abcdab','ab'),'ab') from dual;

If you want to trim CHR(13) only when it comes with a CHR(10) it gets more complicated. Firstly, translated the combined string to a single character. Then LTRIM/RTRIM that character, then replace the single character back to the combined string.

select replace(rtrim(ltrim(replace('abccccabcccaab','ab','#'),'#'),'#'),'#','ab') from dual;

Answer 3

Fowloing code remove newline from both side of string:

select ltrim(rtrim('asbda'||CHR(10)||CHR(13) ,''||CHR(10)||CHR(13)),''||CHR(10)||CHR(13))  from dual

but in most cases this one is just enought :

select rtrim('asbda'||CHR(10)||CHR(13) ,''||CHR(10)||CHR(13)))  from dual

Answer 4

Instead of using regexp_replace multiple time use (\s) as given below;

SELECT regexp_replace('TEXT','(\s)','')
FROM dual;

Answer 5

I know this is not a strict answer for this question, but I've been working in several scenarios where you need to transform text data following these rules:

1. No spaces or ctrl chars at the beginning of the string
2. No spaces or ctrl chars at the end of the string
3. Multiple ocurrencies of spaces or ctrl chars will be replaced to a single space

Code below follow the rules detailed above:

WITH test_view AS (
  SELECT CHR(9) || 'Q   qwer' || CHR(9) || CHR(10) ||
         CHR(13) || ' qwerqwer     qwerty  ' || CHR(9) || 
         CHR(10) || CHR(13) str
  FROM DUAL
) SELECT 
     str original
    ,TRIM(REGEXP_REPLACE(str, '([[:space:]]{2,}|[[:cntrl:]])', ' ')) fixed
  FROM test_view;


ORIGINAL               FIXED                 
---------------------- ----------------------
    Q   qwer           Q qwer qwerqwer qwerty

 qwerqwer     qwerty                                         

1 row selected.

Answer 6

TRANSLATE (column_name, 'd'||CHR(10)||CHR(13), 'd')

The 'd' is a dummy character, because translate does not work if the 3rd parameter is null.