Question

I am new to PL/SQL but have plenty of other SQL experience, including Oracle (just not so much scripting). I want to declare a numeric (integer) var, set it to a row count, and display it in a sentence-wrapped string. The end goal of this exercise is to have a SQL*Plus script that prints the string “There are 1 rows”.

In SQL*Plus on Unix, I do:

SQL> variable v_dCnt number;
SQL> select count(*) into :v_dCnt from dual;

  COUNT(*)
----------
         1

SQL> select 'There are ' || :v_dCnt || ' rows' as MESSAGE from dual;

MESSAGE 
-------------------------------------------------------
There are  rows

Note how it displays blank for v_dCnt rather than a value of 1

In Rapid SQL on Win7, I do

variable v_dCnt number;
select count(*) into :v_dCnt from dual;
select 'There are ' || :v_dCnt || ' rows' from dual;

and get ORA-01008: not all variables bound

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

In SQL*Plus, you most likely just need to put the SELECT INTO in a PL/SQL block

SQL>  variable v_dCnt number;
SQL> begin
  2    select count(*)
  3      into :v_dCnt
  4      from dual;
  5  end;
  6  /

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf

  1* select 'There are ' || :v_dCnt || ' rows' from dual
SQL> /

'THEREARE'||:V_DCNT||'ROWS'
-------------------------------------------------------
There are 1 rows