ACCEPT in SQL script not working

Question

G'day
Why does the following use of the 'accept' keyword not work?
I want a user to be prompted to either commit or rollback but it does not work in the following 'experiment'
set echo on
set termout on
set feedback on
update emp set sal = sal*2 where ename = 'SCOTT';
accept action char prompt 'rollback or commit >'
&action
the following is what happens when i run the script:
SQL> @temp02.sql
SQL> set echo on
SQL> set termout on
SQL> set feedback on
SQL> update emp set sal = sal*2 where ename = 'SCOTT';
1 row updated.
SQL> accept action char prompt 'rollback or commit >'
rollback or commit >rollback
SQL> &action
SP2-0042: unknown command "&action" - rest of line ignored.
Any suggestions appreciated.
Tony

Answer 1

Hi, Tony,
Welcome to the forum!
SQL*Plus looks at the first word of a statement before resolving substitution variables. (I don't know why; it resolves them regardless of what the command is.) At any rate, the first word of a command that SQL*Plus interprets has to be spelled out.
"BEGIN" that starts an anonymous block counts as the first word, so you can take Andy's suggestion much further by simply saying:
BEGIN
    &action;
END;
/@ also counts as the first word, so you could also have one-line scripts called commit.sql
COMMIT;and rollback.sql,
ROLLBACK;and then say
@&action