Wrapping text output

Question

Is there anyway in PL/SQL that I can force output to wrap to the next line? I'm working on a report that shows questionnaire questions and some of them are pretty long. My current setup truncates the question if it goes past 60 characters, anymore than that it the formatting of the report is messed up. What I'd like it to do is when 60 characters are reached, it should wrap to the next line like Word and even report builder does. Is this possible?
I have the following procedure to format the output:
PROCEDURE put ( string IN CHAR, pad IN CHAR := 'N'
     , pad_num IN NUMBER := 0 ) IS
cen_pad          number ;
string2           varchar2(255) ;
BEGIN
string2 := nvl(string,' ') ;
if pad in ('C','c') then
cen_pad := floor(( pad_num - length(string2) ) / 2) ;
for i in 1 .. cen_pad loop
string2 := ' '||string2 ;
end loop ;
string2 := rpad(string2,pad_num,' ') ;
elsif pad in ('R','r') then
string2 := rpad(string2,pad_num,' ') ;
elsif pad in ('L','l') then
string2 := lpad(string2,pad_num,' ') ;
elsif pad = 'N' then
null ;
end if ;
dbms_output.put(string2) ;
END ;
As well as this one to print a new line:
PROCEDURE putl(string2 in char) IS
BEGIN
dbms_output.put_line(string2);
END;
Is there some way I could modify these to make this happen or is there some other way to do it?
thanks,
Ian

Answer 1

This is what I use :-
create or replace procedure EIR.EIR_TXT_PRN(c_string in varchar2)
is
v_first boolean;
v_text varchar2(32000);
v_chars_to_print BINARY_INTEGER;
v_chars_printed BINARY_INTEGER;
v_prn_txt varchar2(254);
loop_counter BINARY_INTEGER;
begin
v_first := TRUE;
v_text := c_string;
v_chars_to_print := length(v_text);
v_chars_printed := 1;
loop_counter := 0;
while v_chars_to_print > 0 loop
v_prn_txt := substr(v_text, v_chars_printed, 1);
if ((v_prn_txt = chr(10)) OR loop_counter > 249) then
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(v_prn_txt);
loop_counter := 0;
else
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT(v_prn_txt);
loop_counter := loop_counter + 1;
end if;
v_chars_printed := v_chars_printed + 1;
v_chars_to_print := v_chars_to_print - 1;
end loop;
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('');
end ;