Oracle Identifying multiple spaces using REGEXP_LIKE - sql

Question

I'm trying to identify fields that have more than one space in a comment, e.g. 'this lhas three spaces'
Using this I can get anything with two spaces, but would like to be able to get 2 or more:
select * from labtec.spaces
where REGEXP_LIKE(SPACES, '[[:space:]]{2}');
Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I believe that you can:
select * from labtec.spaces
where REGEXP_LIKE(SPACES, '[[:space:]]{2,}');
Note the comma.
For "Between three and five" you would use {3,5}, for "two or more" {2,}, for "eight or less" {,8}

Answer 2

where REGEXP_LIKE(SPACES, '[[:space:]][[:space:]]+');

Answer 3

You do not need to check for two-or-more characters - checking for two is sufficient to filter the rows since if there are three characters then matching only two of them will work just as well as matching two-or-more.
This will find strings which have two or more (consecutive or non-consecutive) space CHR(32) characters (without using regular expressions):
SELECT *
FROM labtec.spaces
WHERE INSTR( spaces, ' ', 1, 2 ) > 0
This will find where there are two or more consecutive space CHR(32) characters:
SELECT *
FROM labtec.spaces
WHERE INSTR( spaces, ' ' ) > 0
If you want any two (or more) consecutive white-space characters then you only need to check for two matching characters:
SELECT *
FROM labtec.spaces
WHERE REGEXP_LIKE( spaces, '\s\s' ) -- Or, using POSIX syntax '[[:space:]]{2}'
Update - Leading and trailing spaces
SELECT *
FROM labtec.spaces
WHERE SUBSTR( spaces, 1, 2 ) = ' ' -- at least two leading spaces
OR SUBSTR( spaces, -2 ) = ' ' -- at least two trailing spaces
or, using (perl-like) regular expressions:
SELECT *
FROM labtec.spaces
WHERE REGEXP_LIKE( spaces, '^\s\s|\s\s$' )