Question

I have a table with column node_id as number, where,

node_id
0
2000
300300300
400400400

what i am trying to get is convert this number into string and add ‘-‘ after every third digit from right.
So expected output is,

node_id
000-000-000
000-002-000
300-300-300
400-400-400

This is the query which i am using,

select TO_CHAR( lpad(t1.node_id,9,'0'), '999G999G999', 'NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS="-"'), node_id from table t1;

The output i am getting is,

node_id
0
2-000
300-300-300
400-400-400

My problem is I also need to prepend ‘0’ to each record such that the total length is 11.
I tried adding to_char immediately around lpad so as to convert the lpad output to varchar, but that also gives the same output.

Answer 1

Just change your format mask to:

'099G999G999'

(Note the leading ‘0’)