SQL error "ORA-01722: invalid number"

A very easy one for someone, The following insert is giving me the

> ORA-01722: invalid number

why?

INSERT INTO CUSTOMER VALUES (1,'MALADY','Claire','27 Smith St Caulfield','0419 853 694');
INSERT INTO CUSTOMER VALUES (2,'GIBSON','Jake','27 Smith St Caulfield','0415 713 598');
INSERT INTO CUSTOMER VALUES (3,'LUU','Barry','5  Jones St Malvern','0413 591 341');
INSERT INTO CUSTOMER VALUES (4,'JONES','Michael','7  Smith St Caulfield','0419 853 694');
INSERT INTO CUSTOMER VALUES (5,'MALADY','Betty','27 Smith St Knox','0418 418 347');

An ORA-01722 error occurs when an attempt is made to convert a character string into a number, and the string cannot be converted into a number.

Without seeing your table definition, it looks like you're trying to convert the numeric sequence at the end of your values list to a number, and the spaces that delimit it are throwing this error. But based on the information you've given us, it could be happening on any field (other than the first one).

Suppose tel_number is defined as NUMBER - then the blank spaces in this provided value cannot be converted into a number:

create table telephone_number (tel_number number);
insert into telephone_number values ('0419 853 694');

The above gives you a

> ORA-01722: invalid number

Here's one way to solve it. Remove non-numeric characters then cast it as a number.

cast(regexp_replace('0419 853 694', '[^0-9]+', '') as number)

Well it also can be :

SELECT t.col1, t.col2, ('test' + t.col3) as test_col3 
FROM table t;

where for concatenation in oracle is used the operator || not +.

In this case you get : ORA-01722: invalid number ...

This is because:

> You executed an SQL statement that tried to convert a string to a > number, but it was unsuccessful.

As explained in:

• Oracle/PLSQL: ORA-01722 Error.

To resolve this error:

> Only numeric fields or character fields that contain numeric values > can be used in arithmetic operations. Make sure that all expressions > evaluate to numbers.

As this error comes when you are trying to insert non-numeric value into a numeric column in db it seems that your last field might be numeric and you are trying to send it as a string in database. check your last value.

Oracle does automatic String2number conversion, for String column values! However, for the textual comparisons in SQL, the input must be delimited as a String explicitly: The opposite conversion number2String is not performed automatically, not on the SQL-query level.

I had this query:

> select max(acc_num) from ACCOUNTS where acc_num between 1001000 and 1001999;

That one presented a problem: Error: ORA-01722: invalid number

I have just surrounded the "numerical" values, to make them 'Strings', just making them explicitly delimited:

> select max(acc_num) from ACCOUNTS where acc_num between '1001000' and '1001999';

...and voilà: It returns the expected result.

edit: And indeed: the col acc_num in my table is defined as String. Although not numerical, the invalid number was reported. And the explicit delimiting of the string-numbers resolved the problem.

On the other hand, Oracle can treat Strings as numbers. So the numerical operations/functions can be applied on the Strings, and these queries work:

> select max(string_column) from TABLE; > > select string_column from TABLE where string_column between '2' and 'z'; > > select string_column from TABLE where string_column > '1'; > > select string_column from TABLE where string_column <= 'b';

In my case the conversion error was in functional based index, that I had created for the table.

The data being inserted was OK. It took me a while to figure out that the actual error came from the buggy index.

Would be nice, if Oracle could have gave more precise error message in this case.

If you do an insert into...select * from...statement, it's easy to get the 'Invalid Number' error as well.

Let's say you have a table called FUND_ACCOUNT that has two columns:

AID_YEAR  char(4)
OFFICE_ID char(5)

And let's say that you want to modify the OFFICE_ID to be numeric, but that there are existing rows in the table, and even worse, some of those rows have an OFFICE_ID value of ' ' (blank). In Oracle, you can't modify the datatype of a column if the table has data, and it requires a little trickery to convert a ' ' to a 0. So here's how to do it:

1. Create a duplicate table: CREATE TABLE FUND_ACCOUNT2 AS SELECT * FROM FUND_ACCOUNT;

2. Delete all the rows from the original table: DELETE FROM FUND_ACCOUNT;

3. Once there's no data in the original table, alter the data type of its OFFICE_ID column: ALTER TABLE FUND_ACCOUNT MODIFY (OFFICE_ID number);

4. But then here's the tricky part. Because some rows contain blank OFFICE_ID values, if you do a simple INSERT INTO FUND_ACCOUNT SELECT * FROM FUND_ACCOUNT2, you'll get the "ORA-01722 Invalid Number" error. In order to convert the ' ' (blank) OFFICE_IDs into 0's, your insert statement will have to look like this:

INSERT INTO FUND_ACCOUNT (AID_YEAR, OFFICE_ID) SELECT AID_YEAR, decode(OFFICE_ID,' ',0,OFFICE_ID) FROM FUND_ACCOUNT2;

The ORA-01722 error is pretty straightforward. According to Tom Kyte:

> We've attempted to either explicity or implicity convert a character string to a number and it is failing.

However, where the problem is is often not apparent at first. This page helped me to troubleshoot, find, and fix my problem. Hint: look for places where you are explicitly or implicitly converting a string to a number. (I had NVL(number_field, 'string') in my code.)

This happened to me too, but the problem was actually different: file encoding.

The file was correct, but the file encoding was wrong. It was generated by the export utility of SQL Server and I saved it as Unicode.

The file itself looked good in the text editor, but when I opened the *.bad file that the SQL*loader generated with the rejected lines, I saw it had bad characters between every original character. Then I though about the encoding.

I opened the original file with Notepad++ and converted it to ANSI, and everything loaded properly.

I have found that the order of your SQL statement parameters is also important and the order they are instantiated in your code, this worked in my case when using "Oracle Data Provider for .NET, Managed Driver".

var sql = "INSERT INTO table (param1, param2) VALUES (:param1, :param2)";
...
cmd.Parameters.Add(new OracleParameter("param2", Convert.ToInt32("100")));
cmd.Parameters.Add(new OracleParameter("param1", "alpha")); // This should be instantiated above param1.

Param1 was alpha and param2 was numeric, hence the "ORA-01722: invalid number" error message. Although the names clearly shows which parameter it is in the instantiation, the order is important. Make sure you instantiate in the order the SQL is defined.

try this as well, when you have a invalid number error

In this a.emplid is number and b.emplid is an varchar2 so if you got to convert one of the sides

where to_char(a.emplid)=b.emplid

You can always use TO_NUMBER() function in order to remove this error.This can be included as INSERT INTO employees phone_number values(TO_NUMBER('0419 853 694');