why cant I spool <filename> with a variable?

From: GS <spam_at_spam.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 21:49:39 GMT
Message-ID: <TDi4e.171362$fc4.61690@edtnps89>

I know I have done this before, but I dont know why this is not working and I cant find my old script where I did this, perhaps someone here can point out the obvious for me...

I want to run a script every X minutes for awhile tomorrow morning for about 1 hour, and I want the output spooled to a file with a timestamp, simple enough so I write the following script called log_usage.sql:

---

col TS noprint new_value TS
select to_char(sysdate,'hh24:mi:ss') TS from DUAL;

spool &TS.log;
@@temp_usage.sql;
spool off;

---

I keep getting the "SP2-0332 cannot create spool" file error, not a matter of permissions etc as I can spool to a file fine without the variable (this is a windows machine as well)

what am I missing here?

TIA Received on Mon Apr 04 2005 - 16:49:39 CDT