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]

Re: Variable inside a variable

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