How to limit rows in PL/SQL?

Greetings.

This problem has bothered me for some time, and I've finally decided to see if anyone else has a solution to it.

Is there a way to limit the number of rows Oracle returns in a query? For example, if I execute a query like:
SELECT f1 INTO :x

and it returns more than one row, I'll get an exception. I've been told that other databases (namely Sybase) provide a variable that can be set to limit the number of returned rows to a certain number. The solution I've always used in Oracle is to declare a cursor and fetch once from it. Is this the only way in Oracle or does anyone know of another method to use?

• Rich