How to look into all fields (beginner question)

Question

Hello,
I have a table which contains a series of columns like
'GRPREF00', 'GRPREF01', 'GRPREF02', ... 'GRPREF19'.
If I want to know whether the number 34 is in one of these columns, I use the following command:
Select * from <table_name> where 34 in ('GRPREF00', 'GRPREF01', 'GRPREF02', ... 'GRPREF19');
Obviously I cannot use the "..." and I am writing all the time the whole series of columns.
In order to shorten this command, I have already tried teh following command:
Select * from <table_name> where 34 in (*);
but this didn't work.
Does anybody know whether/how it is possible to define a range of columns to look in or whether/how it is possible to search through all the columns of a table?
Thanks
Dominique

Answer 1

Hello
That was really the gist of the original question. It was to find out if any columns contain 34 rather than any columns named 34. Just as a side note, your query would return 0 rows unless the column name was surrounded by double quotes when it was created:
CREATE TABLE dt_test_col (34 varchar2(10))
CREATE TABLE dt_test_col ("34" varchar2(10))
SELECT COUNT(1) counter
FROM user_tab_columns
WHERE column_name='34'
AND table_name= 'DT_TEST_COL' ;Another option, which is similar to one of the methods the OP tried is:
WITH test_data AS
(     SELECT
          CAST(NULL AS VARCHAR2(2)) AS col1,
          CAST(NULL AS VARCHAR2(2)) AS col2,
          CAST(NULL AS VARCHAR2(2)) AS col3,
          CAST(NULL AS VARCHAR2(2)) AS col4,
          CAST(NULL AS VARCHAR2(2)) AS col5,
          '34' AS col6,
          CAST(NULL AS VARCHAR2(2)) AS col7,
          CAST(NULL AS VARCHAR2(2)) AS col8,
          CAST(NULL AS VARCHAR2(2)) AS col9,
          CAST(NULL AS VARCHAR2(2)) AS col10
     FROM
          dual
SELECT
FROM
     test_data
WHERE
     '34' IN (col1,col2,col3,col4,col5,col6,col7,col8,col9,col10)
This does mean that you have to list all of the columns you want to check in the in statement, but the tradeoff is that you don't end up having to write dynamic sql.
The IN statement will likely be transformed by the optimizer into:
Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
   3 - filter("TEST_DATA"."COL1"='34' OR "TEST_DATA"."COL2"='34' OR
              "TEST_DATA"."COL3"='34' OR "TEST_DATA"."COL4"='34' OR "TEST_DATA"."COL5"='34' OR
              "TEST_DATA"."COL6"='34' OR "TEST_DATA"."COL7"='34' OR "TEST_DATA"."COL8"='34' OR
              "TEST_DATA"."COL9"='34' OR "TEST_DATA"."COL10"='34')Which saves you even more typing! :-)
HTH
David