Oracle procedure logic - string manipulation

select substr(yrcol,instr(yrcol,'|',-1),instr(yrcol,')')-2) from yrtab

In MS SQL syntax it will be somethingn like

DECLARE @Str VARCHAR(MAX)
SET @Str = '~(`|¤|{link:10098}|Mobile, Alabama,)~'
--SET @Str =  '~(`|¤|football)~'

SELECT 
	 @Str
	,REPLACE(RIGHT(@Str, CHARINDEX('|', REVERSE(@Str))- 1), ')~', '')
	

Select all Open in new window

Dont have Oracle installed otherwise I would modify it

regexp_substr(str,'.*\|(.+)\)~$',1,1,null,1)

sdstuber,
Would you be kind enough to explain the pattern match and what each of the remaining four parameters are? I typically think of the regexp_substr function as having a maximum of five parameters, the string expression, the pattern, the start position, the occurrence, and a match parameter but you're showing six. Great job, by the way!

It worked for me.
SQL> select * from txt;
TEXT
-------------------------------------------------------------
~(`|¤|football)~
~(`|¤|{link:10098}|Mobile, Alabama,)~

SQL> select regexp_substr(text,'.*\|(.+)\)~$',1,1,null,1)
  2  from txt;
REGEXP_SUBSTR(TEXT,'.*\|(.+)\)~$',1,1,NULL,1)
-------------------------------------------------------------
football
Mobile, Alabama,

The last parameter (subexpression) is for 11gR2.  If you have a lower version you'll get the error you see.

the parameters are...

str,   - the string you are searcing
'.*\|(.+)\)~$'  - the regular expression describing what we are looking for
,1  - starting at the first character
,1 - find the first instance of the expression
,null - no special options like case insensitive or multi-line
,1 - return only the first subexpression

Thanks so much for the explanation. We recently upgraded to 11gR2, which was why it worked, but was looking at 11gR1 documentation. Regular expressions aren't very intuitive, but extremely powerful when you get them right :-)

This query takes all characters before the '~ (whether or not they exist) and concatenates them with the function sdstuber provided against all of the characters between the '~ and ~' and concatenates them with all of the characters after the ~'  (whether or not they exist), adding a space between the three parts then trimming any outside spaces -

select trim(substr(text,instr(text,'~'||chr(39)) + 2)||' '||
REPLACE(SUBSTR(REGEXP_SUBSTR(text, '~[^~]+~'), INSTR(REGEXP_SUBSTR(text, '~[^~]+~'), '|', -1) + 1), ')~')||' '||
substr(text,instr(text,'~'||chr(39)) + 2)) mystring
from txt;

MYSTRING
-------------------------------------------------------
football
Mobile, Alabama,
blahblahblah football blahblahblah

I meant to post this to your other question, which I have now done.