Return all matches of a regular expression in Oracle - sql

Question

I have a table that contains a VARCHAR2 column called COMMANDS.
The data in this column is a bunch of difficult to read ZPL code that will be sent to a label printer, and amidst the ZPL there are several tokens in the form {TABLE.COLUMN}.
I would a like nice list of all the distinct {TABLE.COLUMN} tokens that are found in COMMANDS. I wrote the following regex to match the token format:
SELECT REGEXP_SUBSTR(COMMANDS,'\{\w+\.\w+\}') FROM MYTABLE;
The regex works, but it only returns the first matched token per row. Is there a way to return all regex matches for each row?
I'm using Oracle 11GR2.
Edit - Here is a small sample of data from a single row -- there are many such lines in each row:
^FO360,065^AEN,25,10^FD{CUSTOMERS.CUST_NAME}^FS
^FO360,095^AAN,15,12^FD{CUSTOMERS.CUST_ADDR1}^FS
So if that was the only row in table, I'd like to have returned:
{CUSTOMERS.CUST_NAME}
{CUSTOMERS.CUST_ADDR1}

Answer 1

You've provided sample of data saying that this is a single row but have presented it as two different rows. So this example based on your words.
-- Sample of data from your question + extra row for the sake of demonstration
-- id column is added to distinguish the rows(I assume you have one)
with t1(id, col) as(
select 1, '^FO360,065^AEN,25,10^FD{CUSTOMERS1.CUST_NAME}^FS^FO360,095^AAN,15,12^FD{CUSTOMERS1.CUST_ADDR1}^FS' from dual union all
select 2, '^FO360,065^AEN,25,10^FD{CUSTOMERS2.CUST_NAME}^FS^FO360,095^AAN,15,12^FD{CUSTOMERS2.CUST_ADDR2}^FS' from dual
),
cnt(c) as(
select level
from (select max(regexp_count(col, '{\w+.\w+}')) as o_c
from t1
) z
connect by level <= z.o_c
)
select t1.id, listagg(regexp_substr(t1.col, '{\w+.\w+}', 1, cnt.c)) within group(order by t1.id) res
from t1
cross join cnt
group by t1.id
Result:
ID RES
---------------------------------------------------------
1 {CUSTOMERS1.CUST_ADDR1}{CUSTOMERS1.CUST_NAME}
2 {CUSTOMERS2.CUST_ADDR2}{CUSTOMERS2.CUST_NAME}
As per #a_horse_with_no_name comment to the question, really, it's much simpler to just replace everything else that doesn't match the pattern. Here is an example:
with t1(col) as(
select '^FO360,065^AEN,25,10^FD{CUSTOMERS.CUST_NAME}^FS^FO360,095^AAN,15,12^FD{CUSTOMERS.CUST_ADDR1}^FS' from dual
)
select regexp_replace(t1.col, '({\w+.\w+})|.', '\1') res
from t1
Result:
RES
-------------------------------------------
{CUSTOMERS.CUST_NAME}{CUSTOMERS.CUST_ADDR1}

Answer 2

I think there isn't. You should write some PL/SQL to get the others matching tokens. My best advice to you is to use a pipelined function.
First, create a type:
create type strings as table of varchar2(200);
Then the function:
CREATE OR REPLACE function let_me_show
return strings PIPELINED as
l_n number;
l_r varchar2(200);
begin
for r_rec in
( SELECT commands
FROM MYTABLE )
loop
l_n := 1;
l_r := REGEXP_SUBSTR(r_rec.COMMANDS,'\{\w+\.\w+\}', 1, l_n);
while l_r is not null
loop
pipe row(l_r);
l_n := l_n + 1;
l_r := REGEXP_SUBSTR(r_rec.COMMANDS,'\{\w+\.\w+\}', 1, l_n);
end loop;
end loop;
end;
Now you can use the function to return the results:
select *
from table(let_me_show())