Question

I have a string (with spaces) from which i want to separate the last word. For example:

"Steve Jobs" => Jobs
"Stack OverFlow Question" => Questions

Is there any function in PL/SQL or SQL so that i am able to get the results as Jobs and Question separated out?

Answer 1

You can use INSTR and SUBSTR. INSTR tells you the position of a particular character. Passing a -1 for the start position tells Oracle to start looking at the end of the string backwards toward the front of the string.

SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf

  1  with x as (
  2    select 'Steve Jobs' str from dual union all
  3    select 'Stack Overflow Question' from dual
  4  )
  5  select substr( str, instr( str, ' ', -1 ) + 1 ) last_word
  6*   from x
SQL> /

LAST_WORD
----------------------------------------------------------------------  
Jobs
Question