First day of the month (or year)

by Granville Bonyata on January 25, 2012

A little known but much easier way to get the first day of the month:

SQL> select TRUNC(SYSDATE,’MONTH’) FROM DUAL;

TRUNC(SYS
———
01-JAN-12

Much easier than the more common TO_DATE(’01-‘||TO_CHAR(v_date,’MON-YYYY’)).

It works for Year too:

SQL> select TRUNC(TO_DATE(’15-AUG-2012′),’YEAR’) FROM DUAL;

TRUNC(TO_
———
01-JAN-12