Entering SQL*Plus commands
Commands such as DESCRIBE, COLUMN, TTITLE, SET, and all the others listed in the “Commands” section are commands to SQL*Plus itself. These must be entered on one line and are executed immediately after you enter them. For example:
SET ECHO ON DESCRIBE employee
SQL*Plus commands may optionally be terminated by a semicolon. For example:
PROMPT This semicolon won't print.; CONNECT system/manager;
You can change this behavior of SQL*Plus toward semicolons by changing the SQLTERMINATOR setting.
Long SQL*Plus commands may be continued onto multiple physical lines.
The SQL*Plus continuation character is a hyphen
(-). Use it at the end of a physical line to
continue a long SQL*Plus command to the next line. The following
three lines, for example, are treated as one by SQL*Plus:
COLUMN employee_id - FORMAT 099999 - HEADING 'Emp ID'
The space in front of the continuation character is optional. Quoted strings may also be continued. For example:
SELECT 'Hello- World!' FROM dual;
When you are continuing a quoted string, any spaces before the continuation character will be included in the string. The line break also counts as one space.