LAST_DAY

Syntax

Description of last_day.gif follows
Description of the illustration last_day.gif

Purpose

LAST_DAY returns the date of the last day of the month that contains date. The last day of the month is defined by the session parameter NLS_CALENDAR. The return type is always DATE, regardless of the datatype of date.

Examples

The following statement determines how many days are left in the current month.

SELECT SYSDATE,
   LAST_DAY(SYSDATE) "Last",
   LAST_DAY(SYSDATE) - SYSDATE "Days Left"
   FROM DUAL;
 
SYSDATE   Last       Days Left
--------- --------- ----------
30-MAY-01 31-MAY-01          1

The following example adds 5 months to the hire date of each employee to give an evaluation date:

SELECT last_name, hire_date, TO_CHAR(
   ADD_MONTHS(LAST_DAY(hire_date), 5)) "Eval Date"
   FROM employees;

LAST_NAME                 HIRE_DATE Eval Date
------------------------- --------- ---------
King                      17-JUN-87 30-NOV-87
Kochhar                   21-SEP-89 28-FEB-90
De Haan                   13-JAN-93 30-JUN-93
Hunold                    03-JAN-90 30-JUN-90
Ernst                     21-MAY-91 31-OCT-91
Austin                    25-JUN-97 30-NOV-97
Pataballa                 05-FEB-98 31-JUL-98
Lorentz                   07-FEB-99 31-JUL-99
. . .