Use of WITH clause

Question

Hi,
I am using Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.3.0 .
I am working in a procedure where I want to manipulate the data produced by a WITH AS clause.  But it is giving "PL/SQL: ORA-00942: table or view does not exist" error. A small example to illustrate my problem is given below. Here in the example am just trying to get a replaced string by using the out put of a WITH AS clause.
SET SERVEROUTPUT ON;
DECLARE
CNT INTEGER;
LETTER CHAR(1);
REPLACED_STRING VARCHAR2(10);
BEGIN
REPLACED_STRING := 'ABC';
WITH T AS
  (SELECT 'ABC' VAL FROM DUAL),
  TMP (LEN, SUBVAL) AS
  (SELECT LENGTH(VAL) LEN,
    SUBSTR(VAL, 1, INSTR(VAL, 'B', 1, 1)) SUBVAL
   FROM T
   UNION ALL
   SELECT LENGTH(VAL)-1 LEN,
   SUBSTR(VAL, 2, INSTR(VAL, 'C', 1, 1)) SUBVAL
   FROM T
  SELECT COUNT(*) INTO CNT FROM TMP,T ;
  FOR I IN 1..CNT LOOP
  SELECT SUBSTR(SUBVAL,1,1) INTO LETTER FROM  TMP,T;
  SELECT REPLACE(REPLACED_STRING,LETTER,'X')INTO REPLACED_STRING FROM DUAL;
  DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(REPLACED_STRING);
END LOOP;
END;
I thought of declaring a cursor which will hold the data produced by WITH clause but it did not work. Can you please let me know what are the possible options to do this.
Thanks

Answer 1

I think, I can not use the WITH inside loop as, I want to manipulate on data resulted by WITH reading row by row from it. I have a complex procedure and I wont be able to explain that scenario here and thus i came up with a similar problem through a very simple example. I will try to explain my problem thru my example here.
The WITH in my example give an out put as :
SUBVAL
AB
BC
  WITH T AS
  (SELECT 'ABC' VAL FROM DUAL),
  TMP (LEN, SUBVAL) AS
  (SELECT LENGTH(VAL) LEN,
    SUBSTR(VAL, 1, INSTR(VAL, 'B', 1, 1)) SUBVAL
   FROM T
   UNION ALL
   SELECT LENGTH(VAL)-1 LEN,
   SUBSTR(VAL, 2, INSTR(VAL, 'C', 1, 1)) SUBVAL
   FROM T
  SELECT subval FROM TMP,T;
and then by using this in the PLSQL block mentioned above
  FOR I IN 1..CNT LOOP
  SELECT SUBSTR(SUBVAL,1,1) INTO LETTER FROM  TMP,T;
  SELECT REPLACE(REPLACED_STRING,LETTER,'X')INTO REPLACED_STRING FROM DUAL;
  DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(REPLACED_STRING);
  END LOOP;
I want to have an output like:
XBC
XXC
Please note that nature of my original problem is that I want to manipulate the data given by WITH clause in the same procedure by passing it to other functions/procs to get the desired result. So please advice me following this approach only which would be helpful.
Thanks