There’s a little trick…
Today I had to convert a “number” of minutes into hours:minutes format. Something like convert 570 minutes in format hour:minutes. As you know, 570/60 is “9,5” and should be “9:30”.

Lets use 86399 seconds (23:59:59) as example:

I began testing “to_char(to_date)” functions:
boesing@db>select to_char(to_date(86399,'sssss'),'hh24:mi:ss') formated from dual;

FORMATED
——–
23:59:59

Ok, it works. But using “seconds past midnight” (sssss). By the way, it works between 0 and 86399 only:

boesing@db> select to_char(to_date(86400,'sssss'),'hh24:mi:ss') from dual;
select to_char(to_date(86400,'sssss'),'hh24:mi:ss') from dual
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01853: seconds in day must be between 0 and 86399

The problem remains. How to use minutes in 3 digits (570 minutes -> 9:30), for example?
The best way I solve was:

--- Seconds in hours:minutes:seconds
--- If you comment the first "TO_CHAR" line, can be minutes in hours:minutes too..
select
TO_CHAR(TRUNC(vlr/3600),'FM9900') || ':' || -- hours
TO_CHAR(TRUNC(MOD(vlr,3600)/60),'FM00') || ':' || -- minutes
TO_CHAR(MOD(vlr,60),'FM00') -- second
from dual;

It always works. 🙂

boesing@db>select
2 TO_CHAR(TRUNC(86399/3600),'FM9900') || ':' || -- hours
3 TO_CHAR(TRUNC(MOD(86399,3600)/60),'FM00') || ':' || -- minutes
4 TO_CHAR(MOD(86399,60),'FM00') -- second
5 from dual;

TO_CHAR(TRUNC
————-
23:59:59

boesing@db>select
2 TO_CHAR(TRUNC(570/3600),’FM9900′) || ‘:’ || — hours
3 TO_CHAR(TRUNC(MOD(570,3600)/60),’FM00′) || ‘:’ || — minutes
4 TO_CHAR(MOD(570,60),’FM00′) — second
5 from dual;

TO_CHAR(TRUNC
————-
00:09:30

boesing@db>select
2 TO_CHAR(TRUNC(MOD(570,3600)/60),’FM00′) || ‘:’ || — hours
3 TO_CHAR(MOD(570,60),’FM00′) — minutes
4 from dual;

TO_CHAR
——-
09:30

Any better way? Leave a comment. Thanks!

Matheus.