Utl_url.escape

Question

Hi, I need to use the utl_url.escape function to convert some illegal characters in a url and I want to know why I get the error "FALSE: invalid identifier" when I use the function like this:
SELECT utl_url.escape('http://www.acme.com/a url with space.html', FALSE, 'UTF8')
FROM dual;
Where the first parameter is the url I want to escape, the second one indicates that I don't want to escape the reserved chars, and the third one is the target charset. I search in the documentation and this is a right way to use the function.
If I use the function without the second and third arguments, it work properly but it don't make a good conversion, I think it is because I am not indicating the target charset.
Any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

UTL_URL.escape is defined as follows:
  FUNCTION escape(url                   IN VARCHAR2,
                  escape_reserved_chars IN BOOLEAN  DEFAULT FALSE,
                  url_charset           IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT
                                                    utl_http.get_body_charset)
                  RETURN VARCHAR2;so the second parameter is BOOLEAN which is a datatype NOT KNOWN to SQL.
You can only use this function in a PLSQL block like this e.g.:
declare
  url_esc varchar2(1000);
begin
  url_esc := utl_url.escape('http://www.acme.com/a url with space.html', FALSE, 'UTF8');
  dbms_output.put_line(url_esc);
end;
http://www.acme.com/a%20url%20with%20space.htmlMessage was edited by:
michaels