Question

I have a simple string manipulation to be done in Oracle, but couldnt find a way.
Assuming delimter as ‘-‘
If input str = ‘abc-123-xyz-456’ and lines = 1
then output should be ‘abc’
I get this using

select substr('abc-123-xyz-456',1,instr('abc-123-xyz-456','-')-1) from dual;

If lines = 2, then I need output as
abc-123

If lines = 3, then I need output as
abc-123-xyz and so on

I am not able to figure this out in an efficient manner.
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I found a cool solution:

select substr('abc-123-xyz-456',1,instr('abc-123-xyz-456','-',1,n)-1) 
  from dual;

Where n is the number of lines.
Let me know if there is a better way,