How to count no of rows affected by a ref cursor ?

Question

Hi,
I have taken a ref cursor inside the function since I want to return resultset to the calling application. I also need the NO. OF ROWS AFFECTED by the ref cursor. When I used refcur%rowcount, it returned me 0. Whereas actual no. of rows inside the table is 11.
As a workaround I created a integer variable v_rcount and again executed the cursor's query using count() to store the no. of rows affected by the cursor query. See definition 1 and 2 :
How can I get no. of rows affected by the ref cursor without taking additional variable ??? Any other means available ???
DEFINITION ONE:
create or replace function f_ref()
RETURN curpkg.ref_cursor as
stock_cursor curpkg.ref_cursor;
v_rcount INTEGER;
BEGIN
OPEN stock_cursor FOR SELECT * FROM FIRSTTABLE;
select count(*) into v_rcount from firsttable;
dbms_output.put_line('['|| v_rcount||']');
RETURN stock_cursor;
END;
OUTPUT:
[11]
DEFINITION TWO:
create or replace function f_ref()
RETURN curpkg.ref_cursor as
stock_cursor curpkg.ref_cursor;
v_rcount INTEGER;
BEGIN
OPEN stock_cursor FOR SELECT * FROM FIRSTTABLE;
v_rcount := stock_cursor%rowcount;
dbms_output.put_line('['|| v_rcount||']');
RETURN stock_cursor;
END;
OUTPUT:
[0]

Answer 1

michaels>  DECLARE
   emp_row   emp%ROWTYPE;
   cur       sys_refcursor;
   FUNCTION f_ref
      RETURN sys_refcursor
   AS
      stock_cursor   sys_refcursor;
   BEGIN
      OPEN stock_cursor FOR
         SELECT *
           FROM emp;
      RETURN stock_cursor;
   END f_ref;
BEGIN
   cur := f_ref;
   LOOP
      FETCH cur
       INTO emp_row;
      EXIT WHEN cur%NOTFOUND;
   END LOOP;
   DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('Fetched rows: ' || cur%ROWCOUNT);
   CLOSE cur;
END;
Fetched rows: 14