Re: Alternatives to using utl_file

As another alternative to reading and writing files all over the place
(I believe that is what the OP was specifically about), how about
moving (or copying) the file to one place, and deleting or moving the copy when your process is done?

I use the pice of java code here
(http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/8i/ShellCommandsFromPLSQL.php).
It works pretty good, and offers a bit more flexibility in the security area. It shouldn't be difficult to make the few changes needed for a *nix environment. The only problem I had with it was after upgrading to 11i, I discovered that Oracle had changed the security footprint, so my environment variables weren't known to the shelled out process. It took a while and an SR, but what I needed to do was create a new account with only the very specific permissions
(and defined variables) needed, then run Oracle as that account so the
shell process would have access to the variables.

-- 
-- Bill Ferguson
--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l