Oracle - ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error (DBMS_OUTPUT)

Question

I implemented a function that returns clob data-type, and I would like to print the result in DBMS Output. Unfortunately, I am getting

Answer 1

You will not be able to print a clob using dbms_output.put_line directly if it is greater than 32767 bytes.

If this is the case you can create a procedure to iterate through the clob and print out one smaller chunk at a time. Such a procedure and test script is below:

declare 

  c clob;

  procedure print_clob( p_clob in clob ) is
      v_offset number default 1;
      v_chunk_size number := 10000;
  begin
      loop
          exit when v_offset > dbms_lob.getlength(p_clob);
          dbms_output.put_line( dbms_lob.substr( p_clob, v_chunk_size, v_offset ) );
          v_offset := v_offset +  v_chunk_size;
      end loop;
  end print_clob;


begin
  for i in 1..10000 loop
     c := c || 'test';
  end loop;
  --This will result in ora-06502
  --dbms_output.put_line(c);

  print_clob(c);

end;

Note that v_chunk_size must result in less than 32767 bytes being chunked at-a-time. If you encoding has 2 bytes per char you will need to use (32767/2).