New Column Breaking Existing PLSQL

Question

My PLSQL contains many statements like this:
DECLARE
data NUMBER;
BEGIN
SELECT .. FROM ... WHERE col1=data;
END;
where col1 is a column name and 'data' is a variable named without the v_ convention. And this is the problem. If I add a new column called 'data', the above code will break since 'data' is now interpreted as the name of a column.
Are there any ways to guard against this error when adding new columns? I don't know how the existing code name the variables, and it is practically not possible to inspect all existing code manually.

Answer 1

In that case, give the column a name that is hard to appear as a variable in your code:
something like <TABLE_NAME>$<COLUMN_NAME> for your new column:
SQL> alter table emp add (emp$data number) ;
Table altered.
SQL> desc emp
Name                                      Null?    Type
EMPNO                                     NOT NULL NUMBER(4)
ENAME                                              VARCHAR2(10)
JOB                                                VARCHAR2(9)
MGR                                                NUMBER(4)
HIREDATE                                           DATE
SAL                                                NUMBER(7,2)
COMM                                               NUMBER(7,2)
DEPTNO                                             NUMBER(2)
EMP$DATA NUMBER
SQL>