Skip to Main Content
Oracle SQL*Plus: The Definitive Guide
book

Oracle SQL*Plus: The Definitive Guide

by Jonathan Gennick
March 1999
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
528 pages
14h 39m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Oracle SQL*Plus: The Definitive Guide

Commenting Your Scripts

If you write extensive scripts, you should write extensive comments. In fact, any time you write a script, no matter how short, consider including a few comments to explain the purpose of the script.

Comments may be placed in a script using any of the following three methods:

  1. By using the REMARK command

  2. By using double-hyphen characters

  3. By delimiting the comment by /* and */

Each method works just a bit differently from the others. You will probably find yourself gravitating towards the /*...*/ and — delimiters. The REMARK command is cumbersome, and consequently isn’t used very often.

The REMARK Command

The REMARK command may be used to place comments in a SQL script. Any text on the same line following the REMARK command is considered a comment. The REMARK command may also be abbreviated to REM, as the following example shows:

REMARK This is a comment.
REM This is a comment too.

SQL*Plus does not look for substitution variables in the text following a REMARK command, so you are free to use ampersands, and any other characters you like, in your comments.

The /* and */ Delimiters

The /* and */ delimiters are familiar to many programmers, and may also be used to delimit comments in SQL*Plus. Comments created using this method may span multiple lines, for example:

/*
This is the second line of a comment.
This is the third line.
*/

You can also use /* and */ to add comments to SQL queries, for example:

SELECT * FROM employee WHERE /* employees are current */ SYSDATE ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Oracle SQL*Plus: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

Oracle SQL*Plus: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

Jonathan Gennick
Oracle PL/SQL Programming, Third Edition

Oracle PL/SQL Programming, Third Edition

Steven Feuerstein, Bill Pribyl
Oracle SQL

Oracle SQL

Dan Hotka

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 1565925785Supplemental ContentCatalog PageErrata