Seperate value of a specific column with “,” delimiter in Oracle using “Regular Expression”

Question

I have a table with below structure:

create table CUSTOMER_INFO
(
  cust_id      NUMBER,
  cust_name    VARCHAR2(50),
  cust_address VARCHAR2(50)
)

Example Data :

cust_id   |  cust_name |  cust_address
------------------------------------------
  1       |     A      |  Tehran,Tehran  
  2       |     B      |  Rasht,Tehran    
  3       |     C      |  Minsk,Tehran  

I want to have this output:

cust_id   |  cust_name |  cust_address
------------------------------------------
  1       |     A      |  Tehran
  2       |     B      |  Tehran    
  2       |     B      |  Rasht
  3       |     C      |  Minsk
  3       |     C      |  Tehran

what I've written so far is this :

select distinct cust_id, 
                cust_name, 
                address
  from (select distinct cust_id,
                        cust_name,
                        regexp_substr(cust_address, '[^,]+', 1, level) address
          from customer_info 
        connect by regexp_substr(cust_address, '[^,]+', 1, level) is not null)
order by cust_id 

I want to know if there is better way of writing this query and Will this solution produce false result ? Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Such an approach makes sure you don't get too many duplicates as your query does (so you removed them with a distinct in line #4; without it, you'd get 12 rows as a result):

SQL> with customer_info (cust_id, cust_name, cust_address) as
  2    (select 1, 'A', 'Tehran,Tehran' from dual union all
  3     select 2, 'B', 'Rasht,Tehran'  from dual union all
  4     select 3, 'C', 'Minsk,Tehran'  from dual
  5    )
  6  select --distinct      --> use DISTINCT to get result you want
  7         cust_id,
  8         cust_name,
  9         regexp_substr(cust_address, '[^,]+', 1, column_value) cust_address
 10  from customer_info cross join
 11    table(cast(multiset(select level from dual
 12                        connect by level <= regexp_count(cust_address, ',') + 1
 13                       ) as sys.odcinumberlist))
 14  order by cust_id;

   CUST_ID C CUST_ADDRESS
---------- - ----------------------------------------------------
         1 A Tehran
         1 A Tehran
         2 B Rasht
         2 B Tehran
         3 C Minsk
         3 C Tehran

6 rows selected.

SQL>

However, as you want to have only one 1-A-Tehran combination, distinct in line #6 has to be uncommented.