loading into LONG CHAR

I am trying to load about 100K worth of characters into a database field. I know that varchar2 only goes up to 4000 so i tried using long varchar. However when I attempted uploading information I got an ORA-01704 when i looked it up here was the message.
>oerr ora 01704

01704, 00000, "string literal too long"

// *Cause:  The string literal is longer than 4000 characters.
// *Action:  Use a string literal of at most 4000 characters.
//          Longer values may only be entered using bind variables.

I know you can't declare long as bind variables so I tried the following command to try and declare it

VARIABLE variable varchar2(1000000)

but that got me an error saying it was too large to declare.

so then i tried this

VARIABLE variable varchar2(4000)

that worked but again when i tried uploading information to it it still gave me the
string to long error. Is there a way to get around this?

thanks! Received on Fri Feb 23 2001 - 00:38:03 CET