What is the difference between explicit and implicit cursors in Oracle?

Question

I am a bit rusty on my cursor lingo in PL/SQL. Anyone know this?

Answer 1

As stated in other answers, implicit cursors are easier to use and less error-prone.

And Implicit vs. Explicit Cursors in Oracle PL/SQL shows that implicit cursors are up to two times faster than explicit ones too.

It's strange that no one had yet mentioned Implicit FOR LOOP Cursor:

begin
  for cur in (
    select t.id from parent_trx pt inner join trx t on pt.nested_id = t.id
    where t.started_at > sysdate - 31 and t.finished_at is null and t.extended_code is null
  )
  loop
    update trx set finished_at=sysdate, extended_code = -1 where id = cur.id;
    update parent_trx set result_code = -1 where nested_id = cur.id;
  end loop cur;
end;

Another example on SO: PL/SQL FOR LOOP IMPLICIT CURSOR.

It's way more shorter than explicit form.

This also provides a nice workaround for updating multiple tables from CTE.