What is the function of the to_date function in Oracle?

In Oracle database, the to_date function is used to convert a string to a date format. It accepts two parameters: the first parameter is the string to be converted and the second parameter specifies the format of the string. The to_date function converts the string to a date and returns a value of date type.

For example, to convert the string “2022-01-01” to a date type, you can use the following statement:

to_date('2022-01-01', 'YYYY-MM-DD')

This will return a date value representing January 1, 2022. The to_date function parses the string based on the specified format, extracting the parts such as year, month, and day, then creating a date object.

The to_date function can also be used to convert strings in other formats to dates, just adjust the value of the second parameter based on the actual format of the string.