Question

I have an SQL file which uses declares a cursor and I am running it using @abc, but it did not execute all statements and waiting without returning to command prompt. It did not proceed after declare cursor statement. When I tried to run the declare cursor statement in command mode, the same problem is happening again. I am able to return to SQL priompt only after pressing Ctrl + C. I am very new to SQL world. Though this could be a basic mistake, I am not able to find out the solution in any site. Any help is greatly appreciated.

SQL> DECLARE CURSOR id_cursor IS SELECT id FROM user_names WHERE dept_no = 1002 
AND BITAND(flags, 4) = 4 AND time_created BETWEEN 1137974400 AND 1326067199;
  2
  3
  4  ;
  5
  6

Answer 1

All DECLARE and BEGIN blocks in SQL*Plus need to be ended with a / on a new empty line:

SQL> DECLARE
  2    CURSOR c IS SELECT 1 FROM DUAL;
  3  BEGIN
  4     NULL;
  5  END;
  6  /

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Without this / SQL*Plus has no way to know that your statement has ended (so in your example it waits for user input).