LAST_DAY

Syntax

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 data type 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-03 30-NOV-03
Kochhar                   21-SEP-05 28-FEB-05
De Haan                   13-JAN-01 30-JUN-01
Hunold                    20-MAY-08 31-OCT-08
Ernst                     21-MAY-07 31-OCT-07
Austin                    25-JUN-05 30-NOV-05
Pataballa                 05-FEB-06 31-JUL-06
Lorentz                   07-FEB-07 31-JUL-07
. . .