PL/SQL code not running

Question

Hi , Please help to get the rows which have a character in the PFNUM column for this table
EMPNU PFNUM NAME
100 222 rat
101 a33 sanu
102 4a4 rahul
our PL/SQL is
1 DECLARE
2 i number;
3 j number;
4 t varchar2(10);
5 CURSOR ratnesh_cur IS
6 select PFNUM from employee;
7 BEGIN
8 OPEN ratnesh_cur;
9 FETCH ratnesh_cur into t;
10 FOR i IN 0..LENGTH(t)
11 loop
12 FOR j IN 0..9
13 loop
14 IF SUBSTR('t',i,1)= j THEN dbms_output.put_line(t);
15 ENDIF;
16 END LOOP;
17 END LOOP;
18 CLOSE ratnesh_cur;
19* END
20 /
END LOOP;
ERROR at line 16:
ORA-06550: line 16, column 5:
PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "LOOP" when expecting one of the following:
if
ORA-06550: line 19, column 3:
PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "end-of-file" when expecting one of the
following:
loop

Answer 1

TO APC ...
<quote>Which solution is appropriate depends on the spec details.</quote>
Indeed … that is why I provided a simple alternative answering the original question (my interpretation of it extrapolated from the actual data set provided) … I did not comment on your reply.
But let me address your answers:
<quote>The best way of checking whether a value is numeric is to test for failure of the Oracle built-in function TO_NUMBER()</quote>
That would be too strong a statement, wouldn’t it?
Let us assume a table with a varchar2 column which we know contains only alphanumeric characters … 2097152 rows … half containing only digits … half with a mix of digits, upper and lower alphabetical characters.
flip@FLOP> select count(0) from apc
2 where instr(translate(lower(v)
3 ,'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
4 ,'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'),'x') > 0
5 ;
COUNT(0)
1048576
Elapsed: 00:00:05.02
flip@FLOP> select count(0) from apc
2 where is_number(v) = 0
3 ;
COUNT(0)
1048576
Elapsed: 00:00:13.05
“is_number” is your function modified to return 1 (true) or 0 (false) instead of the Boolean.
Clearly a solution employing TO_NUMBER is not always the most performant way (as you seem to imply) … all those context switches between SQL and PL/SQL do add up.
Soooo … there is no “most performant way” to check for numeric or non-numeric values for all categories of problems … in fact there isn’t even a universal solution … one has to have some knowledge of the data domain being checked and the environment context.
So how about the ‘?’ and '@’? … Is the string ‘-1?123@99' numeric or not? Having modified your “is_number” function yet again to do “ln := to_number(pv_string,'9G999G999D99');” …
flip@FLOP> select is_number('-1?123@99') from dual;
IS_NUMBER('-1?123@99')
0
NO.
flip@FLOP> alter session set nls_numeric_characters='@?';
Session altered.
flip@FLOP> select is_number('-1?123@99') from dual;
IS_NUMBER('-1?123@99')
1
YES.
But forget about nls settings … how about ‘-123e2’? … is this numeric or not ?
flip@FLOP> select to_number('-123e2') from dual;
TO_NUMBER('-123E2')
-12300
According to TO_NUMBER, it is numeric … for the person having the knowledge of the data domain being checked that well may be a false positive.
Hope this proves the point about the universal solution and the qualities of TO_NUMBER.
As for <quote>And if the character is uppercase?</quote> … this kind of flipped me … looking at the link supplied by you … and glancing over the implementation of “StringParse” one could well ask: “and if the string contains lowercase?” … but nobody did … would’ve been a bit too picky and outside the main technique being demonstrated.
Gabe