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:

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Answer 1

No. Load would only store the file contents in Sql*Plus's own sql buffer. You can then run, edit and list the buffer.

A substitution variable is not the right place to load a file into. Use a bind variable of type clob for that and load the file contents using utl_file. But of course the file has to be located on the server in this case.

edit: if the data has to be located on the client, your option would be to load the clob using a pl/sql block and several calls to dbms_lob.writeappend

Your file would have to look like this (cannot test it ATM):

var l clob;

begin
  dbms_lob.createtemporary(l);
  dbms_lob.writeappend(l, 'abcdef...');
  dbms_lob.writeappend(l, 'ijkl...');
end;
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