TRUNCATE TABLE does not work in PL/SQL - Why?

Question

Hey there!
Is there any issue with truncate table not working inside an PL/SQL package?
For example this function:
PROCEDURE FLUSH_TABLE(vi_table_name VARCHAR2) IS
vn_table_name VARCHAR2(30);
BEGIN
vn_table_name := UPPER(LTRIM(RTRIM(vi_table_name)));
TRUNCATE TABLE vn_table_name;
END FLUSH_TABLE;
returns the following error msg:
Error: PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "TABLE" when expecting one of the following:
:= . ( @ % ;
The symbol ":= was inserted before "TABLE" to continue.
Line: 5926
Text: TRUNCATE TABLE VN_TABLE_NAME;
Can somebody explain me the problem here? In my point of view, the error msg is not quite right ;)
Regards,
Thomas

Answer 1

> I just think the error msg is confusing
When you looked for TRUNCATE in the PL/SQL reference you might have noticed that the PL/SQL language has no TRUNCATE keyword. The error message indicates that syntactically the code appears to be some sort of variable assignment but has an extra keyword and no assignment operator. You would get the same message for any similar string of unrecognised keywords:
SQL> BEGIN
  2      TRUNCATE TABLE emp;
  3  END;
  4  /
    TRUNCATE TABLE emp;
ERROR at line 2:
ORA-06550: line 2, column 14:
PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "TABLE" when expecting one of the following:
:= . ( @ % ;
The symbol ":= was inserted before "TABLE" to continue.
SQL> BEGIN
  2      TRANSMOGRIFY TABLE emp;
  3  END;
  4  /
    TRANSMOGRIFY TABLE emp;
ERROR at line 2:
ORA-06550: line 2, column 18:
PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "TABLE" when expecting one of the following:
:= . ( @ % ;
The symbol ":= was inserted before "TABLE" to continue.
SQL> BEGIN
  2      MORE TEA VICAR; 
  3  END;
  4  /
    MORE TEA VICAR;
ERROR at line 2:
ORA-06550: line 2, column 10:
PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "TEA" when expecting one of the following:
:= . ( @ % ;