Question

Am using Oracle 11g as my database and PL/SQL as the SQL language to validate certain columns inside a table.

Requirement(s):

1. Validate a “City Name” so that it only contains alpha characters and no numbers.

2. Can contain a space for cities such as San Jose or San Francisco.

   function ValidateCity(city in varchar2) return varchar2 is
       valid varchar2(50) := 'valid';
   begin
       if not REGEXP_LIKE (city, '^[A-Z\s]*$') then
          valid := (case when valid = 'valid' then '' else valid end) 
                    || 'Does not match pattern ^[A-Z\s]*$ ';
       else
          valid := 'Required ';
       end if;
      return valid;
   end;
   

This works when I pass in a single city name like “Tucson” but not when there is a space, e.g. San Francisco or Los Angeles.

Any hints / suggestions / advice is welcome!

Thank you for taking the time for reading this…

Answer 1

normal* (special normal*)* again…

^[[:alpha:]]+([-[:space:]][[:alpha:]]+)*$

Oracle regexes do not support \s, see here. [:alpha:] and [:space:] are POSIX character classes and always need to be in character classes. [-[:space:]] means “a dash, or a space character”. You may wish to replace [:space:] with a single space character instead.

[edited to simplify: special here is really only either a dash or a space]