The Lexical Set of Elements : Introduction « PL SQL Programming « Oracle PL/SQL Tutorial






  1. Oracle PL/SQL Tutorial
  2. PL SQL Programming
  3. Introduction
  1. The PL/SQL lexical set of elements consists of identifiers, delimiters, literals, and comments.
  2. Identifiers are names of PL/SQL program items and units.
  3. These items and units could be of different kinds - constants, variables, exceptions, cursors, cursor variables, subprograms, and packages.
  4. An identifier cannot exceed 30 characters.
  5. An identifier consists of a letter optionally followed by more letters, numerals, dollar signs, underscores, and number signs.
  6. By default, identifiers are not case sensitive.
  7. Identifiers may not be the same as reserved words, so you cannot use the word end as a variable name.








24.1.Introduction
24.1.1.Writing a simple program
24.1.2.Each complete line of the PL/SQL code must end with a semicolon (;).
24.1.3.Anonymous Block Structure
24.1.4.An example of an anonymous block.
24.1.5.Anonymous blocks can be nested in the procedure and exception blocks in as many levels as you want
24.1.6.The Lexical Set of Elements
24.1.7.Delimiters
24.1.8.Comments
24.1.9.Multi-line comments start with /* and end with */.
24.1.10.Declaring variables
24.1.11.Declaring a Variable by Reference
24.1.12.There are some restrictions on the declaration of variables:
24.1.13.Assigning values to variables
24.1.14.Assign SQL query results to PL/SQL variables
24.1.15.Literals as variable values
24.1.16.Examples of Integer and Real Literals
24.1.17.Numeric literals cannot contain dollar signs or commas, but they can be written in scientific notation
24.1.18.Character and string literals in the Oracle world are enclosed by single quotes