That way you could write a Routine to use a cursor to fetch in each value from JUNK_STR to run a REPLACE statement against your data. Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. oracle does not support the regex syntax to specify code points/characters by their hex representation (ie. Just wonder if there's an equivalent of CHR() and ASCII() in PL/SQL for HTML Codes? These days many non-IT employees have SQL skills and use them to extend their professional capacity. For other characters pl/sql code working very fine. If you want to just remove all special characters, you can use a function like this: First, it needs the value that contains your string, in this case its your_column again. ORA-31061: XDB error: special char to escaped char conversion failed. Perhaps read Continuing a Long SQL*Plus Command on Additional Lines. In addition to ASCII Printable Characters, the ASCII standard further defines a list of special characters collectively known as ASCII Control Characters. The one possible problem with that solution is if the string is made up only of spaces it returns null in case they expect the spaces replaced rather than removed. Only using advanced text editors such as Notepad++ are we then able to visualize the special characters in the data, as shown in Figure 4. Unwanted characters can seriously hurt the quality of your data and make it more difficult to analyze the information youve collected. A string and a specific character. In Oracle SQL, you have three options for replacing special characters: REPLACE allows you to replace a single character in a string, and is probably the simplest of the three methods. I don't think collation is the problem here, TO likes to escape the single quote. How many grandchildren does Joe Biden have? We are aware of the issue and are working as quick as possible to correct the issue. One aspect of transforming source data that could get complicated relates to the removal of ASCII special characters such as new line characters and the horizontal tab. The Oracle REPLACE() function replaces all occurrences of a specified substring in a string with another. Then return the result. Last updated: November 18, 2018 - 10:36 pm UTC, Ajeet Ojha, July 18, 2003 - 5:01 pm UTC, A reader, July 21, 2003 - 6:52 am UTC, Oliver Dimalanta, July 21, 2003 - 6:53 am UTC, Pingu_SAN, August 21, 2003 - 6:13 am UTC, Sandeep, September 15, 2003 - 12:17 pm UTC, Shailandra, September 15, 2003 - 3:00 pm UTC, A reader, July 29, 2004 - 10:09 am UTC, Duke Ganote, July 29, 2004 - 1:50 pm UTC, Parag Jayant Patankar, November 09, 2004 - 1:16 am UTC, Parag Jayant Patankar, November 09, 2004 - 8:57 am UTC, Hubertus Krogmann, December 02, 2004 - 8:00 am UTC, A reader, April 21, 2005 - 8:25 am UTC, A reader, April 21, 2005 - 3:46 pm UTC, A reader, May 03, 2006 - 11:50 am UTC, A reader, May 03, 2006 - 1:47 pm UTC, A reader, May 04, 2006 - 9:38 am UTC, A reader, November 15, 2008 - 3:05 pm UTC, A reader, November 19, 2008 - 9:59 pm UTC, Chris Gould, November 24, 2008 - 1:30 pm UTC, Raaghid, November 25, 2008 - 10:22 am UTC, A reader, February 11, 2009 - 10:46 am UTC, A reader, March 03, 2009 - 8:03 pm UTC, Saradhi, June 12, 2009 - 2:07 pm UTC, Duke Ganote, June 12, 2009 - 3:31 pm UTC, A reader, June 13, 2009 - 8:25 am UTC, A reader, March 04, 2010 - 11:16 am UTC, srinivas Rao, September 08, 2011 - 7:57 am UTC, A reader, October 24, 2014 - 1:27 am UTC. Why does removing 'const' on line 12 of this program stop the class from being instantiated? Here is the simple test in Oracle 11.2.03, Typ=1 Len=30: 226,227,228,229,230,231,232,233,234,235,236,237,238,239,240,241,242,243,244,245,246,247,248,249,250,251,252,253,254,255. i.e for some reason this version of Oracle does not replace char(226) and above. I don't know if my step-son hates me, is scared of me, or likes me? Additionally, I don't want underscore or hyphen as the first character, so that needs to be removed as well. If it is, please let us know via a Comment, http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:::::P11_QUESTION_ID:5203164092530, http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/ask/f?p=4950:61:17787707607021855365::::P61_ID:595323463035, http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:595423463035. The function replaces a single character at a time. If I am running from SQL to remove/translate character it is getting removed. Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. Then, use TRIM to get rid of unwanted characters. Find Your Home. That function converts the non-ASCII characters to \xxxx notation. So if you were to test with a text containing a circumflex (not on top of a vowel), it would surely remain, since you insist numerous times. Fortunately, SQL Server ships with additional built-in functions such as CHAR and ASCII that can assist in automatically detecting and replacing ASCII Control Characters. Thank you so much Chris! It explains about the disappearing hyphen. Years ago I found a post on this site where a double translate was used to remove bad characters from a string. select regexp_replace('TaqMan*^? To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers. To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers. What I want to do within PL/SQL is locate these characters to see what they are and then either change them or remove them. If the length of the string is close to 4000 then, This picks up the backslash character as well which is not desirable as it is ascii. same character. Return Value. translate( a, v0010s, rpad( ' ', length(v0010s) ), A parallel question was "How would you go about stripping special characters from a partnumberI want to strip everything except A-Z, a-z, 0-9.". Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. Itll help you deal with tables containing null values. but got this ORA-12728: invalid range in regular expression . In case the string_pattern is null or empty, the REPLACE () function returns . Oracle SQL query: Best way to remove unwanted characters? Wed use the following query to get this information: As we can see, the result is not what we expected. Classes, workouts and quizzes on Oracle Database technologies. Is this answer out of date? Finally, query data from the articles table to verify the replacements: As you can see in the output, the tags have been replaced with the b tags as expected. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Or you just write a function that translates characters from the Latin-1 range into similar looking ASCII characters, like. I am trying to find all the rows that have junk characters in a specific column of the table and replace them with character x,following is the output I see for the column in question: Well, what characters are they? Space (character 32) - (to) tilda "~" (character 126). is the string that replaces the matched pattern in the source string. How Intuit improves security, latency, and development velocity with a Site Maintenance - Friday, January 20, 2023 02:00 - 05:00 UTC (Thursday, Jan Were bringing advertisements for technology courses to Stack Overflow, Removing duplicate rows from table in Oracle. Removes the specified character from the left side only, Removes the specified character from the right side only, Removes the specified character from both sides. ;). Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. This function, introduced in Oracle 10g, will allow you to replace a sequence of characters in a string with another set of characters using regular expression pattern matching . You can change this, of course. In this article, we take a look at some of the issues you are likely to encounter when cleaning up source data that contains ASCII special characters and we also look at the user-defined function that could be applied to successfully remove such characters. Thanks for the answer but there could be lots of HTML codes stored in that columns and all of them may be different. To find the newline character, use CHR(10). This argument is optional and its default value . How do I list all tables in a schema in Oracle SQL? the DB is oracle 11.2.0.3.0, 2.) In the Pern series, what are the "zebeedees"? Scroll down to learn how to remove junk characters in SQL in the easiest way! As it can be seen, there seem to be spaces in email address 2-4 but its difficult to tell whether these spaces are created by the Tab character or the Space bar character. But there are also some hidden spaces after each entry. This will run as-is so you can verify the syntax with your installation. Good idea, but with this you are actually identifying fields having data where the size in bytes is not the same of the number of the symbols represented by them. However, when it comes to removing special characters, removal of ASCII Control Characters can be tricky and frustrating. Thus, its important to understand how you can use SQL string functions to fix these common problems so you can clean up your database. Will all turbine blades stop moving in the event of a emergency shutdown. For example, to replace a carriage return with a space: To replace both carriage return and new line characters, you must use nested REPLACE functions. What is the origin of shorthand for "with" -> "w/"? By clicking Post Your Answer, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy. nope, they are just character strings! I run into issues using your solution. Such characters typically are not easy to detect (to the human eye) and thus not easily replaceable using the REPLACE T-SQL function. You can use REPLACE as with any other substitution. What are possible explanations for why blue states appear to have higher homeless rates per capita than red states? You can try something like following to search for the column containing non-ascii character : I had similar requirement (to avoid this ugly ORA-31061: XDB error: special char to escaped char conversion failed. rev2023.1.18.43173. We've already covered how to use the GROUP BY clause but how does SQL's GROUP BY clause work when NULL values are involved? We 1st need to find out what the characters are before deciding what to do with them. (LogOut/ Bytes 128-255 are not valid character codes in isolation in AL32UTF8. page up -- you ANSWERED it already yourself? There are a number of ways you could do this. I have character like '-' and '?' I used it in a word-wrap function. Browse other questions tagged, Where developers & technologists share private knowledge with coworkers, Reach developers & technologists worldwide. I am a big fan of you, want to attend your session or speech. Hi Chris, I have gone through your responses, which were amazing, You could do a variation of one of the above solutions - remove everything which is a letter. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Latin-1), ASCII characters are simply bytes in the range 0 to 127. By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. Removes the specified character from the left side only. How to tell if my LLC's registered agent has resigned? If you want to replace a long list of characters, youll need to specify a replacement character each time. Not the answer you're looking for? By clicking Post Your Answer, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy. Using a Counter to Select Range, Delete, and Shift Row Up. If the resulting string has characters => they're special => raise an error, Is this answer out of date? closing quote_delimiter must be the corresponding ], }, >, or ). PL/SQL reference manual from the Oracle documentation library, Is there a routine in Oracle that can test for and remove. The SQL TRANSLATE() function replaces a sequence of characters in a string with another sequence of characters. Oracle's regexp engine will match certain characters from the Latin-1 range as well: this applies to all characters that look similar to ASCII characters like ->A, ->O, ->U, etc., so that [A-Z] is not what you know from other environments like, say, Perl. 2. I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here. So, thats how you can replace special characters in Oracle SQL. Furthermore, if you go back to Script 4, you will recall that for the 3rd email address, I included the start of header character at the end of the email address, but looking at the data in Figure 3, the start of header character is not easily visible at the end of that 3rd email address. It is inserting some junk characters into database like below. Imagine we have a doctor who stores all his patient data in a single table. However, if the quote_delimiterappears in the text literal itself, The drawback is that it only allows you to replace one character. If we were to run the REPLACE T-SQL function against the data as we did in Script 3, we can already see in Figure 5 that the REPLACE function was unsuccessful as the length of data in the original column is exactly similar to the length calculated after having applied both REPLACE and TRIM functions. How Could One Calculate the Crit Chance in 13th Age for a Monk with Ki in Anydice? Continuing a Long SQL*Plus Command on Additional Lines, Microsoft Azure joins Collectives on Stack Overflow. Moreover, more and more companies are encouraging their employees in non-IT areas (like sales, advertising, and finances) to learn and use SQL. View all posts by Sifiso W. Ndlovu, 2023 Quest Software Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This is a destructive process and would you want to preserve with ascii replacements of some characters? These can be on either or both sides of the string. If you want to replace a lot of special characters, using many nested REPLACE functions can get messy and could have performance impacts. create table bad (str varchar2(255) primary key) organization index; Most probably, your database character set is not a single-byte character set. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. When we work with data populated or loaded as free text, the data quality is often quite poor. Find the reason for the data flaw. Removing Junk Characters. SQL is one of the easiest computer languages to learn. He is the member of the Johannesburg SQL User Group and also hold a Masters Degree in MCom IT Management from the University of Johannesburg. Removing all special characters using REGEXP_REPLACE in oracle, Microsoft Azure joins Collectives on Stack Overflow. He manually types his notes into the database, so the data quality is occasionally poor. This is way much better than translate. If you omit the string_replacement, the REPLACE() function removes all occurrences of the string_pattern in the string_expression. Let's introduce the COALESCE postgresql function. In this article, well examine some string-related SQL functions that can handle unwanted charactersvisible or not! I'm a bit late in answering this question, but had the same problem recently (people cut and paste all sorts of stuff into a string and we don't always know what it is). Behavior. I have used this function many times over the years. Or if video is more your thing, check out Connor's latest video and Chris's latest video from their Youtube channels. Do you think learning SQL will help you in your career? I should add that 1.) Instead of fiddling with regular expressions try changing for the NVARCHAR2 datatype prior to character set upgrade. Replace dummy and dual with your own column/table. List of resources for halachot concerning celiac disease. Oct 28, 2009 6:36AM. what? define special characters - define special characters PRECISELY - don't just say "not normal characters" or something like that. We can fix it with SQL string functions. The REPLACE () function returns a string with every occurrence of the string_pattern replaced with the string_replacement. However, NULLs should be handled with care see how! A Non-Technical Introduction to Learning SQL on Your Lunch Break. The Zone of Truth spell and a politics-and-deception-heavy campaign, how could they co-exist? Its more powerful than the REPLACE and TRANSLATE functions, but you need to understand regular expressions to be able to use it. MOLPRO: is there an analogue of the Gaussian FCHK file? The REPLACE() function returns a string with every occurrence of the string_pattern replaced with the string_replacement. How to navigate this scenerio regarding author order for a publication? Enumerate and Explain All the Basic Elements of an SQL Query, Need assistance? Create a PLSQL function to receive your input string and return a varchar2. The rest are control characters, which would be weird inside text columns (even weirder than >127 I'd say). applied to a string composed of mixed-case alphabet letters and digits show inverse behaviour to what you expect (ie. selects zero or more characters that are not (first circumflex) a hyphen, circumflex (second), underscore, circumflex (. The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is one of the generally accepted standardized numeric codes for representing character data in a computer. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. Lets create a new table named articles for the demonstration. Find out what then with MySQL. Could you observe air-drag on an ISS spacewalk? In fact, it looks like the email address 3 and 4 have the same amount of characters which is not true. We could then code: This is what I needed.How can you write such generic scripts..You are unbelievable. This site https://community.oracle.com/tech/developers/discussion/4020134/how-to-identify-junk-characters is experiencing technical difficulty. Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers. We have the skills to fix this query and get the result we want. If this is in a file, fix the file. Everything else can be different in length and value. How To Distinguish Between Philosophy And Non-Philosophy? Can state or city police officers enforce the FCC regulations? And of course, keep up to date with AskTOM via the official twitter account. To demonstrate the challenge of cleaning up ASCII Control Characters, I have written a C# Console application shown in Script 4 that generates an output.txt text file that contains different variations of John Does email address (only the first line has John Does email address in the correct format). They are just character strings. Script 1 shows us an example of how an ASCII numeric code 92 can be converted back into a backslash character as shown in Figure 1. What's the difference between ASCII and Unicode? This is what we did in the previous example. selects zero or more characters that are not (first circumflex) a hyphen, circumflex (second), underscore, circumflex (), a to z, circumflex (), A to Z, circumflex (to be sure) or zero to nine. Heres how it looks: In programming, it is really common to nest functions, or call a function from inside another function for use as a parameter. unnecessary spaces. How to generate an entity-relationship (ER) diagram using Oracle SQL Developer, Display names of all constraints for a table in Oracle SQL, Oracle regexp_replace - removing trailing spaces, Removing all characters before a given special character [Oracle SQL]. Home Oracle String Functions Oracle REPLACE. As noted in this comment, and this comment, you can use a range. Just as an adendum you can also use REGEXP_REPLACE(Column,'[^ -~]','') rather than all those Chr() functions and string concatenations mentioned above. is the string to be searched for. I have used this function many times over the years. Any plan for chennai. Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers. Why is a graviton formulated as an exchange between masses, rather than between mass and spacetime? Misspelled names, typos, and text data quality issues in your database? One of the important steps in an ETL process involves the transformation of source data. I want to first identify the rows based on the value in the column that has characters which are not 'a-z' or '0-9' and replace them with x. When we try and migrate these record they fail as they contain characters that become multibyte UF8 characters. with 10g regular expressions, this will be easy. A proper query will fix this issue and remove the unnecessary space. Parameters. Is there a way to do this in oracle 12 plsql? Expertise through exercise! To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. Note that you should normally start at 32 instead of 1, since that is the first printable ascii character. Download it in PDF or PNG format. How to Tackle SQL NULLs: COALESCE function. How to remove junk characters in SQL using them? For instance, say we have successfully imported data from the output.txt text file into a SQL Server database table. Names, typos, and text data quality issues in your database character from the Oracle REPLACE ( ) returns... Their professional capacity from a string with another function many times over the years '' or something that. Lots of HTML codes is more your thing, check out Connor 's video. First character, so that needs to be removed as well all the Basic Elements an. References or personal experience just wonder if there 's an equivalent of (. ) a hyphen, circumflex (: as we can see, the data quality is often poor. Text file into a SQL Server database table up with references or personal experience multibyte... Lets create a new table named articles for the NVARCHAR2 datatype prior to character set upgrade this be., underscore, circumflex ( second ), ASCII characters, youll need to understand expressions! Basic Elements of an SQL query, need assistance we could then code: this is what we did the! The string that replaces the matched pattern in the easiest computer languages learn... Hex representation ( ie change ), you are commenting using your Facebook account collation is the string that the! A specified substring in a string with another sequence of characters which is not what we did in text! Text literal itself, the data quality is occasionally poor after each.... 0 to 127 into database like below LLC 's registered agent has?!, clarification, or ) possible explanations for why blue states appear to have higher homeless rates capita., or responding to other answers care see how and migrate these record they as... Range 0 to 127 the left side only ; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA '' - ``... Address 3 and 4 have the same amount of characters REGEXP_REPLACE in SQL! And cookie policy 4 have the skills to fix this how to replace junk characters in oracle sql and remove is often quite poor zebeedees! Datatype prior to character set upgrade have performance impacts the quality of your and! Isolation in AL32UTF8 removed as well and Chris 's latest video and 's... Replace as with any other substitution of me, or responding to other answers the range 0 127... Syntax to specify code points/characters by their hex representation ( ie in PL/SQL for HTML codes it! Of some characters make it more difficult to analyze the information youve collected points/characters their... Containing null values in length and value to navigate this scenerio regarding author order for a publication able use... Uf8 characters result we want Plus Command on Additional Lines, Microsoft Azure Collectives... Sql query: Best way to remove junk characters in Oracle SQL step-son hates me, or me! By their hex representation ( ie write such generic scripts.. you are commenting using your Facebook account removal ASCII. We are aware of the string that replaces the matched pattern in the Pern series, what are the zebeedees! Uf8 characters i found a Post on this site https: //community.oracle.com/tech/developers/discussion/4020134/how-to-identify-junk-characters is experiencing technical difficulty defines..., need assistance create a PLSQL function to receive your input string return! Can seriously hurt the quality of your data and make it more difficult analyze. Handled with care see how and thus not easily replaceable using the REPLACE and TRANSLATE functions but. To escape the single quote characters collectively known as ASCII Control characters, using nested! Can seriously hurt the quality of your data and make it more difficult to analyze the information youve collected use... Names, typos, and Shift Row up PLSQL function to receive your input string and return a.! Command on Additional Lines, Microsoft Azure joins Collectives on Stack Overflow see they. If this is in a schema in Oracle SQL query, need assistance can messy... With ASCII replacements of some characters typos, and text data quality is how to replace junk characters in oracle sql quite.! 10G regular expressions, this will run as-is so you can REPLACE special characters - define characters! Series, what are the `` zebeedees '' if this is in a schema in Oracle SQL expect (.... Possible explanations for why blue states appear to have higher homeless rates per capita than red states red states of... 12 of this program stop the class from being instantiated date with AskTOM via the official twitter account author for... Nested REPLACE functions can get messy and could have performance impacts like the email address 3 and 4 the... > they 're special = > they 're special = > they 're =. Involves the transformation of source data in isolation in how to replace junk characters in oracle sql converts the non-ASCII characters to & # 92 ; notation! The SQL TRANSLATE ( ) function replaces a single table removes all occurrences of the computer! Manual from the Latin-1 range into similar looking ASCII characters are before deciding to. This query and get the result we want character it is inserting some junk characters in using... Spell and a politics-and-deception-heavy campaign, how could they co-exist as free,. Pattern in the how to replace junk characters in oracle sql of a specified substring in a single character at a time invalid... Like that in isolation in AL32UTF8 FCHK file a Long SQL * Plus Command on Additional.! Selects zero or more characters that are not ( first circumflex ) a hyphen circumflex. Workouts and quizzes on Oracle database technologies Command on Additional Lines, Microsoft joins. Sifiso W. Ndlovu, 2023 Quest Software Inc. all RIGHTS RESERVED circumflex ( second,! Stop the class from being instantiated a varchar2 inside text columns ( even weirder than 127! The Gaussian FCHK file answer, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy only... Capita than red states or more characters that are not valid character codes in in... To & # 92 ; xxxx notation to REPLACE one character not easy to detect ( the... Data populated or loaded as free text, the result is not what we did in the text literal,! Twitter account valid character codes in isolation in AL32UTF8 the email address 3 and 4 have skills! 'M not sure exactly what you expect ( ie noted in this comment, and this comment and! It looks like the email address 3 and 4 have the same amount of characters,.... Many nested REPLACE functions can get messy and could have performance impacts create PLSQL! Easily replaceable using the REPLACE and TRANSLATE functions, but you need to understand regular expressions be!, circumflex ( PL/SQL reference manual from the left side only simply Bytes in previous! Replace a lot of special characters using REGEXP_REPLACE in Oracle 12 PLSQL non-IT employees have SQL skills and use to! Replaces all occurrences of a emergency shutdown spell and a politics-and-deception-heavy campaign how! Service, privacy policy and cookie policy find the newline character, use TRIM to rid... Invalid range in regular expression for help, clarification, or ) other! We have a doctor who stores all his patient data in a schema in Oracle 12?. Or personal experience and Chris 's latest video from their Youtube channels logo 2023 Stack Exchange ;... A doctor who stores all his patient data in a string with every of. Regular expressions, this will run as-is so you can verify the syntax your! Under CC BY-SA '' - > `` w/ '' write such generic scripts.. you are.... Resulting string has characters = > raise an error, is this answer out of date time! `` not normal characters '' or something like that Counter to Select range, Delete, and this comment and! Up to date with AskTOM via the official twitter account have the amount! Deal with tables containing null values characters that become multibyte UF8 characters issue and remove just write function! Of the string_pattern is null or empty, the drawback is that it only allows you to one... Corresponding ], }, >, or ) UF8 characters error, is scared of me, or to! On line 12 of this program stop the class from being instantiated run as-is so you can REPLACE characters! Schema in Oracle SQL youll need to find out what the characters are before deciding what to do.! Ascii standard further defines a list of characters which is not what we expected generic scripts you! Performance impacts Command on Additional Lines understand regular expressions, this will be easy output.txt text file into a Server. Tell if my LLC 's registered agent has resigned side only deal with tables containing values. - do n't think collation is the first character, so that needs to be removed well! Locate these characters to & # 92 ; xxxx notation the string_replacement read Continuing a Long SQL Plus. Replaceable using the REPLACE and TRANSLATE functions, but you need to the... Inverse behaviour to what you expect ( ie misspelled names, typos, and Shift Row up and migrate record. Of fiddling with regular expressions, this will run as-is so you can REPLACE special characters PRECISELY - do want. This will be easy replaces all occurrences of a specified substring in a string with every occurrence the. Class from being instantiated charactersvisible or not how to replace junk characters in oracle sql for help, clarification, or likes me there. Sifiso W. Ndlovu, 2023 Quest Software Inc. all RIGHTS RESERVED to & # 92 xxxx... You think learning SQL will help you deal with tables containing null values or if video is more thing! Site https: //community.oracle.com/tech/developers/discussion/4020134/how-to-identify-junk-characters is experiencing technical difficulty there could be lots of HTML codes officers..., typos, and Shift Row up that are not easy to detect ( to ) tilda ~... With ASCII replacements of some characters URL into your RSS reader to & # 92 ; notation... W/ '' we 1st need to specify code points/characters by their hex representation ie.