How to return today's date to a variable in Oracle

Question

I want to do this:

DECLARE @today as smalldatetime
SELECT @today = GetDate()

But i need an oracle translation

Answer 1

While not a strict translation, I prefer the following construction in Oracle:

v_today date; -- needs to go where variables are declared

v_today := sysdate; -- used where code is run.

Or even:

v_today date := sysdate;