How to get a part of the string ?

How can i get

1 out of '1 - Jack' or
26 out of '26 - Dave' or
436 out of '436 - Michael' ???

There is a blank space on either side of Hiphen (_-_). I want to get the numeric part of the string only, be it 1 digit 2 digit or whatever...

I am using Oracle9i SQLplus.

hi

i have never used Oracle, but in SQL we do it like this. If i want to get


lets Assume you have a Field "Description" and it Contains

'1 - Jack' And from this you want to Extract 1

Code:

---



select substring(Description,1,1)
from MyTable

---

Its Simple you see

I don't know about Oracle syntax, but for SQL Server you could use something like this:

Left(fieldname, CharIndex(fieldname,' ') -1 )

Ditto on Oracle, also

Left(fieldname, Instr(fieldname, ' ') - 1)