How can I count number of occurrences of the character -
in a varchar2 string?
Example:
select XXX('123-345-566', '-') from dual;
----------------------------------------
2
Here you go:
select length('123-345-566') - length(replace('123-345-566','-',null))
from dual;
Technically, if the string you want to check contains only the character you want to count, the above query will return NULL; the following query will give the correct answer in all cases:
select coalesce(length('123-345-566') - length(replace('123-345-566','-',null)), length('123-345-566'), 0)
from dual;
The final 0 in coalesce
catches the case where you're counting in an empty string (i.e. NULL, because length(NULL) = NULL in ORACLE).