TO_NUMBER

Purpose

You can call this function to convert strings of the CHAR, VARCHAR2, NCHAR, NVARCHAR2, BINARY_FLOAT, or BINARY_DOUBLE type to values of the NUMBER type.

Syntax

TO_NUMBER(expr [, fmt [, 'nlsparam' ] ])

Parameters

Return types

This function returns data of the NUMBER data type.

Examples

• Convert the 0123456 string to a numeric value.

  obclient> SELECT TO_NUMBER('0123456') FROM DUAL;
  +----------------------+
   TO_NUMBER('0123456') 
  +----------------------+
                 123456 
  +----------------------+
  1 row in set
  

• Convert the hexadecimal number 16f to a decimal number.

  obclient> SELECT TO_NUMBER('16f','xxx') FROM DUAL;
  +------------------------+
   TO_NUMBER('16F','XXX') 
  +------------------------+
                      367 
  +------------------------+
  1 row in set