How to handle long string ?

Hi everybody,

   I am new comer for oracle and have a question regarding LONG datatype.    Here is the preoblem:

1. I create a table: create table mar25 (ref_code number(4), text_line long);
2. I insert and select from the table by using:

   ---

   SET linesize 500 SET WRAP ON DECLARE ref_code number(4); count_no number(2); lline char(4000); BEGIN count_no := 0; lline := 'ihhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg'|| 'ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooxxxxxxxxx'; ref_code := length(lline); INSERT INTO mar25 (ref_code, text_line) VALUES (ref_code, lline); END;
   /
   SET HEADING OFF SPOOL long.out SELECT ref_code, text_line FROM mar25; SPOOL OFF
   /
   Set linesize 80 EXIT

   ---

   THE RESULT: From the file "long.out", I just got a number 113, which is ref_code (i.e. length(lline)) and first 80 charactors of the "lline" and followed by a lot of blank charactors untill 500.

 Can you tell me what is happening?
 Thank you. Received on Fri Mar 27 1992 - 16:03:11 CET