Oracle insert date and convert date

Question

I have a string "Sat Nov/30/2013" I have to convert this into date with dd-MMM-yy format.

while inserting the date into table I am doing to_date('Sat Nov/30/2013','dd-MMM-yy').

But this is generating "ORA-01858: a non-numeric character was found where a numeric was expected"

Can you please help me regarding this.

Answer 1

DATE columns do not have any inherent format, they are stored using Oracle's own internal representation. They only have a format for display.

To insert that string into a date column you'd need to use

to_date('Sat Nov/30/2013', 'Dy Mon/DD/YYYY')

But bear in mind that this is language-sensitive, so the date has to be entered in the same language as the session. You can override that with the optional third parameter to the to_date() function.

Then to display the date you can use

to_char(<field>, 'dd-mon-rr')

MMM isn't a recognised datetime format model element, so I'm guessing you want the month abbreviation. Which is also NLS-sensitive of course.

Answer 2

Try

to_date('Sat Nov/30/2013','Dy Mon/DD/YYYY')

Answer 3

You can use your insert query as below:

INSERT INTO DUMMYTABLE (DATE_FIELD_NAME) VALUES (to_date('Sat Nov/30/2013','Dy Mon/DD/YYYY'));

Your dummy table should have DATE_FIELD_NAME as "DATE" Datatype.