Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
NOTE: use Perl; is on undef hiatus. You can read content, but you can't post it. More info will be forthcoming forthcomingly.

All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

use Perl Log In

Log In

[ Create a new account ]

Mr. Muskrat (4572)

Mr. Muskrat
  reversethis-{moc ... ta} {tarksum.rm}
I'm married with 2 girls. I work as a full time Perl programmer for a Land Mobile Radio company in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

I am enrolled at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh - Online working towards a Bachelor of Science in photography.

My other blog [blogspot.com]

Journal of Mr. Muskrat (4572)

Thursday April 12, 2007
03:15 PM

PL/SQL Comments

[ #32976 ]

I like to put comments in my files containing PL/SQL statements and it recently bit me. Perhaps you have already been bitten by it or knew of this behavior already. SQL*Plus' parser has what I consider a bug. Comments (single and multiline) cannot follow a command terminator (semicolon or slash).

SQL> -- good
SQL>      -- good
SQL> select * from dual -- good
  2  /

D
-
X

SQL> select * from dual -- good
  2  ;

D
-
X

SQL> select * -- good
  2  from -- good
  3  dual -- good
  4  ;

D
-
X

SQL> select * -- good
  2  from -- good
  3  dual -- good
  4  /

D
-
X

SQL> select * from dual; -- bad
  2  /
select * from dual; -- bad
                  *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00911: invalid character

SQL> select * from dual
  2  / -- bad
  3  /
/ -- bad
*
ERROR at line 2:
ORA-00933: SQL command not properly ended

SQL> /* good */
SQL> select * from dual /* good */
  2  /

D
-
X

SQL> select * from dual /* good */
  2  ;

D
-
X

SQL> select * /* good */
  2  from /* good */
  3  dual /* good */
  4  ;

D
-
X

SQL> select * /* good */
  2  from /* good */
  3  dual /* good */
  4  /

D
-
X

SQL> select * from dual; /* also bad */
  2  /
select * from dual; /* also bad */
                  *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00911: invalid character

SQL> select * from dual
  2  / /* also bad */
  3  /
/ /* also bad */
*
ERROR at line 2:
ORA-00933: SQL command not properly ended


List all Journal entries
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

PL/SQL Comments 3 Comments More | Login | Reply /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More | Login | Reply
Loading... please wait.

  • I knew there was a reason I got into the habit of typing semicolons and slashes on a line by themselves. There are probably other weirdnesses too.

    • I've always put the slash on a line by itself. I had a file with hundreds of lines in it all terminated with semicolons. Recently I went into the file and added some comments. Two of the comments I added after semicolons. This is not the first time I've done this with the same results and I don't want to make this mistake a third time. I made sure to tell everyone in my group about this behavior in the hope that they also won't make the same mistake.

  • I agree this is bad design, but I think it springs from the subtle difference between the Oracle SQL language and the SQL*Plus program language. Oracle is a madness of interfacing between different languages: PL/SQL, SQL, and SQL*Plus are three separate languages to learn, and they all tend to embed each other. I remember having to explain about three times to a former manager why I could not run an SQL*Plus report from PL/SQL stored in the database before she finally got it.

    Strangely enough, even thoug

    --
    J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
Stories, comments, journals, and other submissions on use Perl; are Copyright 1998-2006, their respective owners.