Select string that has at least 2 alphabetic characters

Question

How to make a select that returns only the strings that contain at least 2 alphabetic characters. The string can contain any combination of characters

ID Name
1  John 
2  John2
3  2
4  /
5  12-
6  JW
7  Jw1
8  ,

Answer 1

where regexp_like(str, '[a-z].*[a-z]', 'i');

should do it.

The 'i' parameter (specific to Oracle SQL regex functions) makes it case-insensitive.

Explanation: https://regex101.com/r/OYec02/1

Answer 2

If you're using 11g or later (and you should be) you can use regexp_count() to do this:

where regexp_count(txt, '[a-z]', 1, 'i') >= 2

This is handy where the number of characters you want to match is larger than two.

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