Can Sqlplus read the contents of a file into a variable?

Question

I\'ve been tinkering with sqlplus for awhile now, and I\'ve managed to get sqlplus to read the contents of a file into a substitution variable as such:

exit          


        

Answer 1

Yes, there's a tricky way to do it. Put something into props.txt and run the script:

DECLARE
  -- the @@ expression must be in separate line as follows
  file_contents VARCHAR2(32767) := '
@@props.txt
';
BEGIN 
  dbms_output.put_line('===');
  dbms_output.put_line(file_contents);
  dbms_output.put_line('===');
END;
/

Note that the file props.txt can not contain an "@" or you'll get nested SQL*PLUS calls