How to Access Cursor Columns Without FETCH .. INTO

Question

I'm using SQL Server to build stored procedures, and I'm using cursors to loop through a select statement

I'm defining the cursor as follow:

DECLARE @c_col1 varchar(max);
DECLARE @c_col2 varchar(max);

DECLARE c as CURSOR FOR 
SELECT col1, col2 
FROM table;

OPEN c;
FETCH NEXT FROM c INTO
@c_col1, @c_col2;

SELECT @c_col1, @c_col2;

Is there a way to access the columns of the cursor without a need to declare variables for each column and to use INTO in FETCH clause? In other words, is it possible to use:

DECLARE c as CURSOR FOR 
SELECT col1, col2 
FROM table;

OPEN c;
FETCH NEXT FROM c; 

SELECT c.col1, c.col2;

Answer 1

No, you have to do it that way if you want to store the values from the cursor in local variables instead of returning them back to the client.

Answer 2

if this is your entire porcedure (right from OP question):

DECLARE @c_col1 varchar(max);
DECLARE @c_col2 varchar(max);

DECLARE c as CURSOR FOR 
SELECT col1, col2 
FROM table;

OPEN c;
FETCH NEXT FROM c INTO
@c_col1, @c_col2;

SELECT @c_col1, @c_col2;

then you can just do the following to return a result set of the two columns, no cursor necessary:

SELECT top 1 col1, col2 
FROM table;