CLOBs and Longs and parsing them.

Environment : NT, Oracle 8.1.6

Scenario : A package body with multiple IN variables, but one being: l_Foo LONG IN
I need to do string functions on it (length, Instr, Substr, etc)

Background : I know string manipulation is not possible with a LONG (like Instr, length, etc.) But the DBMS_LOB package does support those functionalities.

Question: How do I get l_Foo cast into a lob (or clob) type so I can manipulate it WITHIN my PL/SQL package body with DBMS_LOB? The TO_LOB command (I believe) is a SQL Plus DML command and is not supported in the PL/SQL environment. So this does NOT work:

   c_clob CLOB;
   c_clob := TO_LOB(l_Foo);

nor does-->

   insert into tempClobTable select 1, to_lob(lngField) from someOtherTable;

Ultimate Goal : To be able to take this LONG field (no more than 32k of course) and parse it into multiple VARCHAR2(4000) fields.

Any suggestion would be appreciated.
Sean Dolan

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Before you buy. Received on Tue Dec 05 2000 - 19:11:29 CST