The TO_CHAR() function has beeen introduced in MariaDB 10.6.1.

According to the MariaDB documentation, the TO_CHAR() function will be introduced in MariaDB 10.6.1 to enhance Oracle compatibility. The TO_CHAR() entry was added to the documentation a couple of days ago.

According this JIRA entry, the feature is currently still in progress. JIRA is the tool that tracks bugs and feature requests in MariaDB.

Oracle has a TO_CHAR() function and it appears that MariaDB’s new addition will make it more compatible with code being ported from Oracle.

As of this writing, the syntax for the MariaDB TO_CHAR() function will go like this:

TO_CHAR(expr[, fmt])

Where expr is the date/time/timestamp expression, and fmt is an optional format to convert it to. Also, it appears that MariaDB’s TO_CHAR() function won’t support numeric values (whereas, Oracle’s TO_CHAR() function does).