Escape ampersand in PL/SQL Developer

Question

I'm trying a simple INSERT statement against an Oracle database. One of the values is a VARCHAR2 field and the insert statement contains an ampersand. How do I do this? I've tried the following methods:

1. Escape the & as \\& with set escape on
2. set scan off (this causes an ORA-00922 missing or invalid option error)
3. set define off (this causes an ORA-00922 missing or invalid option error)

Any other ideas?

Answer 1

At the bottom of a SQL window there is a button to disable/enable substitution variables:

Answer 2

How I solved it is escaping the & with another &.

For example:

INSERT INTO Foo (Bar) VALUES ('Up && Away');

Works nicely. Thanks for all the help

Answer 3

One of the features of PL/SQL Developer which it takes time to get familiar with is the plethora of different window types.

One of these is the COMMAND window, which is basically a SQL*Plus emulator. We can run SQL*Plus commands as well as SQL, so SET ESCAPE , SET DEFINE and indeed SET SCAN OFF work in that window.

Answer 4

Have you tried something like this?

INSERT INTO tablex VALUES ('Sid ' || '&' || ' Nancy');

Improving my first answer, your problem is related with PL/SQL Developer. If you execute your block in a PL/SQL Developer Command window, you could also use the standard SET DEFINE OFF, which works the same as in SQL*Plus.

Answer 5

the concat worked perfectly fine for me below is what i did in my select statement:

select FUND_NM
FROM PERFORMANCE
WHERE upper(FUND_DESC) in ('My L&' ||'L FUNDS')

Answer 6

I use chr(38) where I need an ampersand in PL/SQL.

addr:= 'mysite.com/order.aspx?no=5678' || CHR(38) || 'id=947';
--above line gives you 'mysite.com/order.aspx?no=5678&id=947';

Answer 7

This is just a SQL Editor issue. To resolve this just compile the procedure with SET DEFINE OFF; . Execution which is PL (executing in server) will not face this issue.