I'm very new to SQL and PL/SQL so please be patient with me. I'm trying to write a select statement for a parameter list of values in Oracle Report Builder. I need the list of values to contain the unique instrument prefix for each instrument we have. What I have in the database are unique instrument IDs (prefixes + ID numbers). I need to trim all but the prefix from these IDs to create the list of values. I'm not sure how to do this as I wouldn't be trimming the string in the same manner to obtain each instrument prefix. For example if I have instrument IDs P123, BN1234, 3M123, and IMWR1234 I would need the prefixes to be P, BN, 3M, and IMWR. Is it possible to use a trim function in this situation or is there another function I should use? Any suggestions?