Re: Increment an alphabetic variable in a PL/SQL loop?

declare
  k_ascii_a constant pls_integer := ascii('A');   l_index varchar2(1);
begin
  for i in 1 .. 10 loop -- Change 10 for whatever is your limit     l_index := chr(k_ascii_A + i - 1);
    dbms_output.put_line('Index is ' || l_index);   end loop;
end;

*But* this is not portable across character sets. I think a better solution is to declare up front your index variables like this :

declare
  k_index_char constant varchar2(26) := 'ABCDEF...Z';   l_index varchar2(1);
begin
  for i in 1 .. 10 loop -- Change 10 for whatever is your limit     l_index := substr(k_index_char, i, 1);     dbms_output.put_line('Index is ' || l_index);   end loop;
end;

That way if you change character sets (e.g. to utf8) you are not reliant on a collating sequence that doesn't match your char set.

Steve

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 9:28 AM, Dunbar, Norman < norman.dunbar_at_environment-agency.gov.uk> wrote:

> David,
>
> >> Hey how can we increment an alphabetic variable in PL/SQL?
> >>
> >> Let's say I have var1 = 'A' for the first pass, but for the
> >> second pass, I want it to autoincrement to var1='B' and
> >> ultimately to 'Z'.
>
> something like :
>
> var1 char(1) := 'A';
>
> ...
>
> var1 := chr(ascii(var1) +1);
> if (var1 > 'Z') then
> -- handle bigger than Z here.
> end if;
>
>
> Cheers,
> Norman.
>
>
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