Parameters
- variable_name
Name you want to give the variable. If you stop here and don’t supply a datatype, SQL*Plus displays the datatype for the variable that you have named.
- data_type
Datatype of the variable. The following datatypes are allowed:
- NUMBER
Results in a floating-point number and is the same as a NUMBER variable in PL/SQL or a NUMBER column in a table. Unlike PL/SQL, SQL*Plus does not let you specify a length or a precision, so a declaration like NUMBER (9,2) is not allowed.
- CHAR [( length [CHAR | BYTE])]
Results in a fixed-length character string. The length is optional. If it is omitted, you get a one-byte string.
- NCHAR [( length )]
Results in a fixed-length character string in the national character set. The length is optional. If it is omitted, you get a one-character string.
- VARCHAR2 ( length [CHAR | BYTE])
Results in a variable-length character string.
- NVARCHAR2 ( length )
Results in a variable-length character string using the national language character set.
- CLOB
Results in a character large object variable.
- NCLOB
Results in a character large object variable using the national language character set.
- REFCURSOR
Gives you a cursor variable you can use to return the results of a SQL query from PL/SQL to SQL*Plus.