I'm trying to write a for loop in Oracle sqlplus interface. When writing the loop statement an pressing enter, I get an error:
SQL> for i in 1..10 loop
SP2-0734: unknown command beginning "for i in 1..." - rest of line ignored.
SQL>
Is there something wrong with my for loop clause?
For loop is a PL/SQL construct. Try wrapping your PL/SQL in BEGIN/END block.
If you need to declare variables, start with a DECLARE. Something like this:
set serveroutput on
begin
for a in 1..10 loop
dbms_output.put_line('a='||to_char(a));
end loop;
end;
/
Hope that helps.
PS Note that set serveroutput on is a SQL*Plus command, and not part of PL/SQL. It just turns on output so you'll see the output from the dbms_output.put_line() function.
declare section a is implicitly defined.sqlplus isn't a language but an interface to Oracle in which you can enter SQL or PL/SQL.
In this case, use a simple pl/sql anonymous block
begin
for i in 1..10
loop
-- some great stuff goes here
end loop;
end
/
