SQLplus script to format text as numeric

Question

I am selecting rows from a table, but some of the columns are a text type, but they always have numeric data in them. How can I format them as numbers?

e.g. column quantity heading 'Quantity' format 999,999

However, since the column in the table is text, the numeric formatting is ignored.

Answer 1

You will need to TO_NUMBER the column in your query.

Answer 2

To render with thousand seperators, you'll need to...

to_char(to_number(quantity), '999,999')

Answer 3

Thanks Steve,

I can now have:

column quantity heading 'Quantity' format 999,999
select TO_NUMBER(quantity) as quantity from Sales

And I get a right justified report.