Re: Searching for text in a Long

Angelito Dizon wrote:
>
> On 1 Dec 1996 03:30:34 GMT,
> N Prabhakar <prabhs_at_po.pacific.net.sg> wrote:
>
> >Write a PL/SQL block. Fetch the value of long column into a VARCHAR2
> >variable of length 2000. Then use INSTR to find out whether your
> >search string is in the fetched variable.
>
> Thanks for your input. The above would work if the search string is within
> the first 2000 chars of the LONG. What can I do if it occurs beyond the
> 2000th position?
>

In release 7.2, there are some new procedures in the DBMS_SQL package that allow you to fetch long data in chunks. Look at DEFINE_COLUMN_LONG and COLUMN_VALUE_LONG in DBMS_SQL. I haven't used them, but we are looking at them for writing procedures to copy long fields between rows. Good luck.

Vince

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