title: How to select all the string characters preceding a . in oracle
body: <p>I am using Oracle 11 G and have the following set of data:</p>
  
  <pre><code>12.0
  4.2
  Version.1
  7.9
  abc.72
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want to return all string characters before the period.  What sort of query would I run in order to achieve this?  Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!</p>