Question

Can someone explain whats happening here?

Both are same query, with the only difference of multi-line and single line in SQL Developer.

The query-

SELECT (TO_TIMESTAMP('10/08/2012','DD/MM/YYYY') -NUMTODSINTERVAL(1/(24*25*60*1000),'HOUR')) a FROM dual;

The above works, but the below won’t-

SELECT (TO_TIMESTAMP('10/08/2012','DD/MM/YYYY') -
              NUMTODSINTERVAL(1/(24*25*60*1000),'HOUR')) a FROM dual;

Answer 1

It looks like SQL Developer’s parser requires the argument after its - operator to be on the same line. …so this works:

SELECT (TO_TIMESTAMP('10/08/2012','DD/MM/YYYY') 
- NUMTODSINTERVAL(1/(24*25*60*1000),'HOUR')) a 
FROM dual;

So the problem isn’t multi-line per-se, but rather needing to have the operator (-) on the same line as its operand. Why exactly? I’d say either a bug, or just a sub-optimal implementation.

[Edit: as others have noted, the hyphen is the default line continuation character, which is why this works this way]