INSTR,SUBSTR

Question

i have a problem in writing a query.
It is a simple select having a "IN" clause, the values of which are created dynamically.
Now since the IN clause could exceed 1000 values at a time, im using it as shown below
select * from table where (col1 in () or in () or in()....);
but my problem is that Im unable to set limit for values inside the IN clause.The values in the IN clause are in format ' %' i.e they are quoted and have a varaible length which Im trying to retrieve either thru INSTR or through SUBSTR.
I get these dynamic values in a varaible.Then i have to select the values for the IN clause from this variable.
Kindly help...its urgent

Answer 1

Why bother with instr/substr and the limitation of the IN clause?
Try to generate a select statement out of your csv format (lots of examples out there). One way could be:
SQL>  var str varchar2(100)
SQL>  var cur refcursor
SQL>  exec :str := 'scott,james'
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL>  begin
   open :cur for
      select empno, ename from emp
       where ename in (
                select upper (t.column_value.extract ('//text()'))
                  from table(cast(xmlsequence(xmltype ('<d><d>'|| replace (:str, ',', '</d><d>') || '</d></d>').extract ('d/d')) as sys.xmlsequencetype)) t);
end;
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL>  print cur
     EMPNO ENAME    
      7788 SCOTT    
      7900 JAMES