Question

I am running the following code. The code does not loop through all the records that are there in the @result. What is the correct syntax. Do I have to use counter in this case? I want it to be flexible so it print all values that are there in the variable.

declare @result varchar(1000)
select @result = item from items

while @result != ''
begin
print @result
end

---

Select item from items

result in this query

What I am getting from print is an endless loop that I have to manually stop and it prints this …

small bed
small bed
small bed
small bed

What is decent way to print all values in the variable. I am talking about text data only, not numbers.

Answer 1

You could use a cursor to iterate over all of the data returned from your query.

declare a_cursor cursor for select Item from Items
declare @Item varchar(1000)

open a_cursor
fetch next from a_cursor into @Item
while @@fetch_status = 0
begin
     print @Item
     fetch next from a_cursor into @Item
end

close a_cursor
deallocate a_cursor