How to find carriage returns in data

There are instances when users mistakenly enter a carriage return -- while entering an address, for example. This basically screws up the record and creates problems while processing it. One of the problems that can happen is that part of the address field (or any other field) in which the user has entered a carriage return will end up as data for some other field.

Here's how to deal with this problem. I save this script as CR.sql and run it at the SQL prompt. I have one record in my table which has carriage return in the ADDR1 field. This is what it looks like:

SQL>@CR 

ACCTID           ADDR1                          INSTR(ADDR1,CHR(13)) 
---------------- ------------------------------ -------------------- 
DUMPADDR1 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
-------------------- 
ADDR2                          INSTR(ADDR2,CHR(13)) 
------------------------------ -------------------- 
DUMPADDR2 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------- 
emorial Pky      450 Veterans      14 
Typ=1 Len=25: 52,53,48,32,86,101,116,101,114,97,110,115,32,13,101,109,111,114,10 
5,97,108,32,80,107,1 
21 

NULL

Here is the the code for CR.sql: 

set pages 100 arraysize 1 
select distinct acctid,addr1,instr(addr1,chr(13)),dump(addr1)   dumpaddr1,addr2, 
instr(addr2,chr(13)), dump(addr2)  dumpaddr2 
from org 
where instr(addr1,chr(13))!=0

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This was first published in April 2002

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