How to bind an aggregated list to a variable in an IN or ANY clause

Question

Hello, and thank you for helping -
I have a process that involves a parameter assertion, the result of which is a string for an IN or ANY clause. I am not able to figure out how to bind the result of the assertion to to executable SQL. The actual business process is long and laborious and, I decided, not worth explaining for the purpose of this forum. I have abstracted the process into some dummy data. The goal is to bind v_any_condition to :a. I could certainly build the SQL without the binding, but I would be very interested to know just the same what I am missing here (I'm sure something simple, or just a basic SQL rules that I have missed).
Thanks!
DECLARE
-- The goal is to bind v_any_condition in an ANY clause
v_any_condition VARCHAR2(30) DEFAULT '4,9,d'; -- the three rows to return from the sample data
-- v_any_condition VARCHAR2(30) DEFAULT DBMS_ASSERT.ENQUOTE_LITERAL('4')||','||
-- DBMS_ASSERT.ENQUOTE_LITERAL('9')||','||
-- DBMS_ASSERT.ENQUOTE_LITERAL('d');
v_sql varchar2(2048);
-- We'll create a simple cursor of VARCHAR2(1) just like DUAL.DUMMY
rc sys_refcursor;
rc_record dual%ROWTYPE;
v_counter NUMBER DEFAULT 0;
BEGIN -- Build the SQL. In this example, we decompose an aggregated string
-- containing the first 16 hex numbers. The result is a simple 16-row table
-- from which we will attempt to return the three rows by binding
-- v_any_condition to ANY in the SQL below.
v_sql := '
SELECT token
FROM ( -- materialize the list
WITH t AS (SELECT ''0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,a,b,c,d,e,f'' AS txt FROM DUAL)
-- then decompose the list into rows
SELECT REGEXP_SUBSTR (txt, ''[^,]+'', 1, LEVEL) AS token
FROM t
CONNECT BY LEVEL <= LENGTH(REGEXP_REPLACE(txt,''[^,]*''))+1
/* WHERE token = ANY(''4'',''9'',''d'') */ -- hardcoding works
WHERE token = ANY(:a) -- binding does not work; the goal is to get this to work '
OPEN rc FOR v_sql USING v_any_condition; -- when binding, we never even enter the loop
LOOP
v_counter := v_counter + 1;
FETCH rc INTO rc_record;
EXIT WHEN rc%NOTFOUND;
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE (v_counter || ': '||rc_record.dummy);
END LOOP;
END;
Edited by: ltps on Jan 9, 2012 4:28 PM

Answer 1

Superb. Thank you very much.
For anyone who is interested in the solution I chose, here is the revised SQL that accepts a list as a bind variable after casting the list as a table. The "split string" code is below that. (What look like double quotes in the block below are actually consecutive single quotes.)
DECLARE
v_any_condition VARCHAR2(30) DEFAULT '4,9,d';
v_sql varchar2(2048);
rc sys_refcursor;
rc_record dual%ROWTYPE;
v_counter NUMBER DEFAULT 0;
BEGIN
v_sql := '
SELECT token
FROM (
WITH t AS (SELECT ''0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,a,b,c,d,e,f'' AS txt FROM DUAL)
-- then decompose the list into rows
SELECT REGEXP_SUBSTR (txt, ''[^,]+'', 1, LEVEL) AS token
FROM t
CONNECT BY LEVEL <= LENGTH(REGEXP_REPLACE(txt,''[^,]*''))+1
, TABLE(CAST(XX_SPLIT_STRING(:a,'','') AS XX_SPLIT_TABLE)) cst
WHERE cst.column_value = token'
OPEN rc FOR v_sql USING v_any_condition;
LOOP
v_counter := v_counter + 1;
FETCH rc INTO rc_record;
EXIT WHEN rc%NOTFOUND;
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE (v_counter || ': '||rc_record.dummy);
END LOOP;
END;
-- And the main SQL, just for clarity:
SELECT token
FROM (
WITH t AS (SELECT '0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,a,b,c,d,e,f' AS txt FROM DUAL)
SELECT REGEXP_SUBSTR (txt, '[^,]+', 1, LEVEL) AS token
FROM t
CONNECT BY LEVEL <= LENGTH(REGEXP_REPLACE(txt,'[^,]*'))+1
, TABLE(CAST(XX_SPLIT_STRING('4,9,d',',') AS XX_SPLIT_TABLE)) cst
WHERE cst.column_value = token;
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION XX_SPLIT_STRING (
p_string VARCHAR2
, p_delimiter VARCHAR2 DEFAULT ','
RETURN XX_SPLIT_TABLE PIPELINED
IS
l_idx PLS_INTEGER;
l_string VARCHAR2(32767) := p_string;
l_value VARCHAR2(32767);
BEGIN
LOOP
l_idx := INSTR ( l_string, p_delimiter );
IF l_idx > 0 THEN
pipe ROW ( SUBSTR ( l_string, 1, l_idx - 1 ) );
l_string := SUBSTR ( l_string, l_idx + LENGTH (p_delimiter) );
ELSE
PIPE ROW ( l_string);
EXIT;
END IF;
END LOOP;
RETURN;
END XX_SPLIT_STRING;