ci...@yahoo.com wrote:
> i am looking to find the first word of a field greater than 17

Some data examples would be useful.

> select businessname
> from tablename
> where
> CHAR(' ', businessname + ' ') > 17

-- field length > 17
where length(trim(businessname)) > 17

or...

-- has any (space delimited) word of length > 17
select regexp_substr(businessname, '[^[:space:]]{18,}')
from tablename
where regexp_like(businessname, '[^[:space:]]{18,}')

or...

-- first (space delimited) word has length > 17
select regexp_substr(businessname, '[^[:space:]]{18,}')
from tablename
where regexp_like(businessname, '^[^[:space:]]{18,}')

--
Peter