Dbms_lob.erase

Question

Hi all
I am using dbms_lob.erase to delete part of data in my Clob
My question is does dbms_lob.erase also free up the space allocated by previous content of my clob?
If not is there someway to do it? After .erase i want to populate clob with different set of data and the amount of data is bigget than existing size of clob
Thanks for all your help

Answer 1

Galia,
I hope this example illustrates your question
completely:
SQL> declare
  2   clb clob;
  3   orig varchar2(10) := '1234567890';
  4   adds varchar2(3) := '456';
  5   amnt number := 3;
  6  begin
  7 
  8   dbms_lob.createtemporary(clb,true);
  9   dbms_lob.write(clb,10,1,orig);
10   dbms_output.put_line('Original content: ' || clb);
11   dbms_lob.erase(clb,amnt,4);
12   dbms_output.put_line('After-erase content: ' || clb);
13   dbms_lob.writeappend(clb,3,adds);
14   dbms_output.put_line('After-writeappend content: ' || clb);
15   dbms_lob.write(clb,3,4,adds);
16   dbms_output.put_line('After-write content: ' || clb);
17   amnt := dbms_lob.getlength(clb);
18   dbms_lob.erase(clb,amnt);
19   dbms_output.put_line('After-complete erase content: ' || clb);
20   dbms_lob.write(clb,20,1,orig || orig);
21   dbms_output.put_line('New content: ' || clb);
22  end;
23  /
Original content: 1234567890
After-erase content: 123   7890
After-writeappend content: 123   7890456
After-write content: 1234567890456
After-complete erase content:
New content: 12345678901234567890
&nbsp
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.Rgds.