Replace character in SQL results

Question

This is from a Oracle SQL query. It has these weird skinny rectangle shapes in the database in places where apostrophes should be. (I wish we would could paste screen shots in here)

It looks like this when I copy and paste the results.

spouse�s

is there a way to write a SQL SELECT statement that searches for this character in the field and replaces it with an apostrophe in the results?

Edit: I need to change only the results in a SELECT statement for reporting purposes, I can't change the Database.

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I ran this

select dump('�') from dual;

which returned

Typ=96 Len=3: 239,191,189

This seems to work so far

select translate('What is your spouse�s first name?', '�', '''') from dual;

but this doesn't work

select translate(Fieldname, '�', '''') from TableName

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Select FN from TN

What is your spouse�s first name?

SELECT DUMP(FN, 1016) from TN

Typ=1 Len=33 CharacterSet=US7ASCII: 57,68,61,74,20,69,73,20,79,6f,75,72,20,73,70,6f,75,73,65,92,73,20,66,69,72,73,74,20,6e,61,6d,65,3f

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EDIT: So I have established that is the backquote character. I can't get the DB updated so I'm trying this code

SELECT REGEX_REPLACE(FN,"\0092","\0027") FROM TN

and I"m getting ORA-00904:"Regex_Replace":invalid identifier

Answer 1

I'm going to propose a front-end application-based, client-side approach to the problem:

I suspect that this problem has more to do with a mismatch between the font you are trying to display the word spouse�s with, and the character �. That icon appears when you are trying to display a character in a Unicode font that doesn't have the glyph for the character's code.

The Oracle database will dutifully return whatever characters were INSERTed into its' column. It's more up to you, and your application, to interpret what it will look like given the font you are trying to display your data with in your application, so I suggest investigating as to what this mysterious � character is that is replacing your apostrophes. Start by using FerranB's recommended DUMP().

Try running the following query to get the character code:

SELECT DUMP(<column with weird character>, 1016) 
FROM <your table> 
WHERE <column with weird character> like '%spouse%';

If that doesn't grab your actual text from the database, you'll need to modify the WHERE clause to actually grab the offending column.

Once you've found the code for the character, you could just replace the character by using the regex_replace() built-in function by determining the raw hex code of the character and then supplying the ASCII / C0 Controls and Basic Latin character 0x0027 ('), using code similar to this:

UPDATE <table>
    set <column with offending character> 
            = REGEX_REPLACE(<column with offending character>,
                            "<character code of �>",
                            "'")
WHERE regex_like(<column with offending character>,"<character code of �>");

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If you aren't familiar with Unicode and different ways of character encoding, I recommend reading Joel's article The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!). I wasn't until I read that article.

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EDIT: If your'e seeing 0x92, there's likely a charset mismatch here:

0x92 in CP-1252 (default Windows code page) is a backquote character, which looks kinda like an apostrophe. This code isn't a valid ASCII character, and it isn't valid in IS0-8859-1 either. So probably either the database is in CP-1252 encoding (don't find that likely), or a database connection which spoke CP-1252 inserted it, or somehow the apostrophe got converted to 0x92. The database is returning values that are valid in CP-1252 (or some other charset where 0x92 is valid), but your db client connection isn't expecting CP-1252. Hence, the wierd question mark.

And FerranB is likely right. I would talk with your DBA or some other admin about this to get the issue straightened out. If you can't, I would try either doing the update above (seems like you can't), or doing this:

INSERT (<normal table columns>,...,<column with offending character>) INTO <table>
SELECT <all normal columns>, REGEX_REPLACE(<column with offending character>,
                             "\0092",
                             "\0027")  -- for ASCII/ISO-8859-1 apostrophe
FROM <table>
WHERE regex_like(<column with offending character>,"\0092");

DELETE FROM <table> WHERE regex_like(<column with offending character>,"\0092");

Answer 2

Before you do this you need to understand what actually happened. It looks to me that someone inserted non-ascii strings in the database. For example Unicode or UTF-8. Before you fix this, be very sure that this is actually a bug. The apostrophe comes in many forms, not just the "'".

Answer 3

This seems a problem with your charset configuracion. Check your NLS_LANG and others NLS_xxx enviroment/regedit values. You have to check the oracle server, your client and the client of the inserter of that data.

Try to DUMP the value. you can do it with a select as simple as:

SELECT DUMP(the_column)
  FROM xxx
 WHERE xxx

UPDATE: I think that before try to replace, look for the root of the problem. If this happens because a charset trouble you can get big problems with bad data.

UPDATE 2: Answering the comments. The problem may be is not on the database server side, may be is in the client side. The problem (if this is the problem) can be a translation on server to/from client comunication. It's for a server-client bad configuracion-coordination. For instance if the server has defined UTF8 charset and your client uses US7ASCII, then all acutes will appear as ?.

Another approach can be that if the server has defined UTF8 charset and your client also UTF8 but the application is not able to show UTF8 chars, then the problem is in the application side.

UPDATE 3: On your examples:

• select translate('What . It works because the � is exactly the same char: You have pasted on both sides.
• select translate(Fieldname. It does not work because the � is not stored on database, it's the char that the client receives may be because some translation occurs from the data table until it's showed to you.

Next step: Look in DUMP syntax and try to extract the codes for the mysterious char (from the table not pasting �!).

Answer 4

I would say there's a good chance the character is a single-tick "smart quote" (I hate the name). The smart quotes are characters 91-94 (using a Windows encoding), or Unicode U+2018, U+2019, U+201C, and U+201D.

Answer 5

TRANSLATE() is a useful function for replacing or eliminating known single character codes.