Howto split LONG column in smaller chunks?

I saw this in a book but could not get hold of it now. How would code a PL/SQL procedure to get a LONG column from a table and split it into more manageable pieces, lets say separated by new line characters.

In what type of PL/SQL variable would you SELECT the LONG column INTO, how do you tell the actual size of the variable; since you one can not apply character function as INSTR, SUBSTR to LONG columns, how could one split it?

The background is I want to write a script that fetches the content of the TEXT column from USER_VIEWS and breaks it into lines so I can run a diff later on to compare it without another version, say in another schema.

Thanks in advance for your help. Received on Thu Oct 21 1999 - 15:41:59 CDT