Variable inside a variable

[Dean Pearson]

This is a little hard to explain, but please bear with me ...

I'm writing a package in PL/SQL and in one of my procedures I am
retrieving data from a db table. This table has a column which
possibly has a variable name in it.

By using a cursor I have a variable holding the value which is another
variable name of the. How can i use the variable I have with dsql so
that i have a sql statement that gives uses the value of the variable
that is named in the initial variable.

eg

v_myVar1 := 'foo';
v_myVar2 := 'v_myVar1';

v_sqlString := 'SELECT '||v_myVar2||' FROM DUAL';

it will give me v_myVar1 when i want the output to be foo!??!

I'm guessing i want some like eval that executes the variable then
parses it to the string.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance

[Frank van Bortel]

Dean Pearson wrote:

This is a little hard to explain, but please bear with me ...

I'm writing a package in PL/SQL and in one of my procedures I am
retrieving data from a db table. This table has a column which
possibly has a variable name in it.

By using a cursor I have a variable holding the value which is another
variable name of the. How can i use the variable I have with dsql so
that i have a sql statement that gives uses the value of the variable
that is named in the initial variable.

eg

v_myVar1 := 'foo';
v_myVar2 := 'v_myVar1';

v_sqlString := 'SELECT '||v_myVar2||' FROM DUAL';

it will give me v_myVar1 when i want the output to be foo!??!

I'm guessing i want some like eval that executes the variable then
parses it to the string.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance

Look up 'execute immediate using ... returning ...'
Bind variables, so scalable. Does not work for DDL (which
you should want to use in this manner, anyway)
--

Regards,
Frank van Bortel