Oracle in a Nutshell

Common Keywords and Clauses

You can specify the following keywords in calling many of the functions described in this chapter:

ASC

Specifies that the ordering sequence should be ascending.

DESC

Specifies that the ordering sequence should be descending.

dfmt

Specifies a date format specification made up of the elements shown in Appendix D.

fmt

Specifies a numeric format specification made up of the elements shown in Appendix C

nlsparams

Specifies a character string made up of one or more of the following elements, allowing you to specify various National Language Support (NLS) characteristics for the result:

NLS_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS = ''dg''

Allows you to specify the characters to use for decimal points, d, and group separators, g. You also must use D and G in your format specification to mark the location of the decimal point and group separators.

NLS_CURRENCY = ''text''

Allows you to specify the currency symbol (up to 10 characters long) to use in place of any L characters contained in the format specification.

NLS_ISO_CURRENCY = ''territory''

Allows you to specify the NLS territory whose currency symbol you want to use in place of any C characters contained in the format specification.

The nlsparams settings are strings embedded within a string. Note that the quotes in this clause are doubled single quotes, not double quotes.

nlsdateparam

Specifies a string in the form NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE = langname, where langname represents a valid NLS language name. The NLS language name affects ...