Question about DATE conversion in Stored Procedure

I have a stored procedure which is using dynamic SQL to retrieve data from any table and output it in character format. Right now, DATE types are implicitly converted to VARCHAR2 using the NLS_DATE_FORMAT format. I need to format the dates differently. So, can I:

1. Change the NLS_DATE_FORMAT setting within the scope of my stored procedure

or

b) detect that a column is of DATE type?

This is PL/SQL stored procedure on Oracle 8, btw.

Thanks,

John

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