Finding the total size of a string when number of characters are known.

Question

Hi: I am having trouble inserting a field in a record that is CLOB. The number of characters in the string is 59298. Any idea how to know what is the size of this string? I am trying to figure out if I am exceeding the size of the string. The error I get is the following
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_LOB", line 789
ORA-06512: at line 1
Second exception: ORA-21560: argument 2 is null, invalid, or out of range
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_LOB", line 789
Thanks
Ray

Answer 1

Either your stacktrace is incomplete or you make something wrong by copy/paste. And please, by providing sql/plsql code, use the tags [ code ] [ / code ] or [ pre ] [ / pre ], otherwise it is very hard to read.
Here is small demonstration of what i mean by 3rd parameter:
SQL> CREATE TABLE T_LOB(ID NUMBER,MESSAGE CLOB)
  2  /
Table created.
SQL> DECLARE
  2  l_clob CLOB;
  3  BEGIN
  4  INSERT INTO t_lob VALUES(1,'Hello')
  5  RETURNING message INTO l_clob;
  6  dbms_lob.writeappend(l_clob,length(',world'));
  7  END;
  8  /
dbms_lob.writeappend(l_clob,length(',world'));
ERROR at line 6:
ORA-06550: line 6, column 1:
PLS-00306: wrong number or types of arguments in call to 'WRITEAPPEND'
ORA-06550: line 6, column 1:
PL/SQL: Statement ignored
SQL> DECLARE
  2  l_clob CLOB;
  3  BEGIN
  4  INSERT INTO t_lob VALUES(1,'Hello')
  5  RETURNING message INTO l_clob;
  6  dbms_lob.writeappend(l_clob,length(',world'),',world');
  7  END;
  8  /
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL> SELECT * FROM t_lob
  2  /
        ID MESSAGE
         1 Hello,worldIn your examples, after length('some lengthy string...' there is no more parameters to dbms_lob.writeappend ( or i don't see any).
Best regards
Maxim