Acess a collection form a shell script

Question

can v access/assign the values stored in a collection to a unix shell script variable... without spooling....
please let me know...

Answer 1

> i. How many records can the variable MYVAR hold..is there a limt?
I would expect so. Even if there is no theoretical limit (which I doubt in this case), there is still physical limitations ito memory.
I would not use a shell variable to stuff in any large amount of data into. I would rather write that output to a file and then use a while read loop to process that file, one line at a time.
> ii. If I have my collection in a plsql block ( as I return the records from a delete statement to
the collection using the returning into... clause ) how can I pass the collection values to
sqlplus.....
You can use a PL/SQL function that returns that collection. E.g.
create or replace myFunction( ..parameters... ) return TMyCollection is ..
And then you can simply select from it via the SQL engine. E.g.
select * from TABLE( myFunction( ..parameters... ) )
However.. that said. I do not like anything much of this approach. Exactly what are you trying to achieve? And why use shell scripts to achieve that?