Question

I’d like to loop through a list of strings and execute a function/procedure with each string as the argument.

What’s the best alternative to the following generic code (since it’s not legal):

set serveroutput on;  
begin
    FOR r IN ('The', 'Quick', 'brown', 'fox')
    LOOP
        dbms_output.put_line( r );
   END LOOP;
end;

I assume there might be pattern for this.

Answer 1

Just for completeness, a pure PL/SQL solution.

SQL> set serveroutput on
SQL>
SQL> declare
  2      my_array sys.dbms_debug_vc2coll
  3          := sys.dbms_debug_vc2coll('The', 'Quick', 'brown', 'fox');
  4  begin
  5     for r in my_array.first..my_array.last
  6      loop
  7          dbms_output.put_line( my_array(r) );
  8     end loop;
  9  end;
 10  /
The
Quick
brown
fox

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>

This uses the preclared sys.dbms_debug_vc2coll datatype, which has quite a generous definition …

SQL> desc sys.dbms_debug_vc2coll
 sys.dbms_debug_vc2coll TABLE OF VARCHAR2(1000)

SQL>

… so, like Gary says, you may wish to declare your own. Especially if your strings are short and you have lots of them.