--============================================================================
-- Copywright 2002, joel crainshaw & chet west
--============================================================================
-- DESCRIPTION
--	simple function to remove "symbols" from a string;
--    can specify a length to look at; readds left-to-right
--	to consider the entire string, pass in 2000 as length
-	returns cleaned string
--============================================================================
-- MODIFICATION HISTORY
-- Person      Date       Comments
-- ---------   ---------- -------------------------------------------
-- joel        04/20/2001 Initial Creation
--============================================================================

   FUNCTION nosymbols (
      p_text     VARCHAR2
     ,p_length   NUMBER
   )
      RETURN VARCHAR2 IS
      
      v_clean   VARCHAR2 (2000);
   BEGIN
      v_clean := SUBSTR (
                    REPLACE (
                       TRANSLATE (
                          p_text
                         ,'~`!@#$%^&*()_-+={}|[]\:";''<>?,./'
                         ,'~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~'
                       )
                      ,'~'
                      ,NULL
                    )
                   ,1
                   ,NVL (p_length, LENGTH (p_text))
                 );
      RETURN (v_clean);
   END nosymbols;