That's tops!

It's a 20 charater field, so it would be managable.

I'd have to test the 'concatinating Null to something still gives you something' though. You can't do TRANSLATE(NumField,'ABCDetc...','') because anything evaluated with a Null makes the whole thing Null (Oracle have a better explanation than I!)

Even if NULL isn't allowed, it could be DECODEd to something, (eg: 'Z') and then a further TRANSLATE could get rid of the Z. So there you go - I could take this code from fugly to ... fuglier.

Anyway, it goes like this: the requestor of this field knows the issue, knows it's not foolproof, and is likely to sign off on it anyway. It still bugs me that the solution isn't perfect, and I am reasonable sure the requestor would not claim ownership of the SUBSTR-each-character SQL, technically perfect though it is.

Whatever. It's Friday evening. I'm home now. What am I doing talking about work?!

/me cracks open a beer...

Edit: Typo in subject line. I blame the beer...