SQL problem - help needed ASAP!!

Question

Hey guys,
Doing a college project... would really appreciate some help. I am trying to use a variable in the where clause of a select cursor in PL/SQL. The code is this:
procedure results(p_search_entry varchar2, p_search_field varchar2) is
cursor c_results is
select * from physics_b where p_search_field = p_search_entry;
begin
for cv_results in c_results
loop
-- loop through actions
end loop;
The problem is that I don't know how to get the where clause to accept the variable passed into the procedure as the field name. Does anyone know the syntax for this?
Thanks very much!
Niall

Answer 1

This isn't the correct forum for this kind of question. The SQL and PL/SQL forum PL/SQL is probably best.
That said, you can't do what you want that way.
You can do
procedure results (p_search_entry in varchar2)
cursor c_result is
select * fro physics_b where subject=p_search_entry;(assuming subject is a column in physics_b)
You can't use a variable to represent a column directly. You need to build the statement as a string and then use execute immediate.
statement:='select * fro physics_b where '||p_search_field||' = :1';
-- this bit is probably bad syntax.
execute immediate statement using p_search_entry;Look up execute immediate and bind variables