There are multiple options. See Split single comma delimited string into rows in Oracle
You just need to add LEVEL in the select list as a column, to get the sequence number to each row returned. Or, ROWNUM would also suffice.
Using any of the below SQLs, you could include them into a FUNCTION.
INSTR in CONNECT BY clause:
SQL> WITH DATA AS 2 ( SELECT 'word1, word2, word3, word4, word5, word6' str FROM dual 3 ) 4 SELECT trim(regexp_substr(str, '[^,]+', 1, LEVEL)) str 5 FROM DATA 6 CONNECT BY instr(str, ',', 1, LEVEL - 1) > 0 7 / STR ---------------------------------------- word1 word2 word3 word4 word5 word6 6 rows selected. SQL>
REGEXP_SUBSTR in CONNECT BY clause:
SQL> WITH DATA AS 2 ( SELECT 'word1, word2, word3, word4, word5, word6' str FROM dual 3 ) 4 SELECT trim(regexp_substr(str, '[^,]+', 1, LEVEL)) str 5 FROM DATA 6 CONNECT BY regexp_substr(str , '[^,]+', 1, LEVEL) IS NOT NULL 7 / STR ---------------------------------------- word1 word2 word3 word4 word5 word6 6 rows selected. SQL>
REGEXP_COUNT in CONNECT BY clause:
SQL> WITH DATA AS 2 ( SELECT 'word1, word2, word3, word4, word5, word6' str FROM dual 3 ) 4 SELECT trim(regexp_substr(str, '[^,]+', 1, LEVEL)) str 5 FROM DATA 6 CONNECT BY LEVEL
Using XMLTABLE
SQL> WITH DATA AS 2 ( SELECT 'word1, word2, word3, word4, word5, word6' str FROM dual 3 ) 4 SELECT trim(COLUMN_VALUE) str 5 FROM DATA, xmltable(('"' || REPLACE(str, ',', '","') || '"')) 6 / STR ------------------------------------------------------------------------ word1 word2 word3 word4 word5 word6 6 rows selected. SQL>
Using MODEL clause:
SQL> WITH t AS 2 ( 3 SELECT 'word1, word2, word3, word4, word5, word6' str 4 FROM dual ) , 5 model_param AS 6 ( 7 SELECT str AS orig_str , 8 ',' 9 || str 10 || ',' AS mod_str , 11 1 AS start_pos , 12 Length(str) AS end_pos , 13 (Length(str) - Length(Replace(str, ','))) + 1 AS element_count , 14 0 AS element_no , 15 ROWNUM AS rn 16 FROM t ) 17 SELECT trim(Substr(mod_str, start_pos, end_pos-start_pos)) str 18 FROM ( 19 SELECT * 20 FROM model_param MODEL PARTITION BY (rn, orig_str, mod_str) 21 DIMENSION BY (element_no) 22 MEASURES (start_pos, end_pos, element_count) 23 RULES ITERATE (2000) 24 UNTIL (ITERATION_NUMBER+1 = element_count[0]) 25 ( start_pos[ITERATION_NUMBER+1] = instr(cv(mod_str), ',', 1, cv(element_no)) + 1, 26 end_pos[iteration_number+1] = instr(cv(mod_str), ',', 1, cv(element_no) + 1) ) ) 27 WHERE element_no != 0 28 ORDER BY mod_str , 29 element_no 30 / STR ------------------------------------------ word1 word2 word3 word4 word5 word6 6 rows selected. SQL>
You could also use DBMS_UTILITY package provided by Oracle. It provides various utility subprograms. One such useful utility is COMMA_TO_TABLE procedure, which converts a comma-delimited list of names into a PL/SQL table of names.