Recently I've had to run a fairly large .sql file that installed a PL/SQL package. There were a number of ampersand (&) characters used throughout the file which were not meant for use as substitution values but SQLDeveloper was still tricked into asking for a substitute to be entered. Luckily, there was an easy way to stop this from happening.

As a simple example if I try to run a SQL statement - "select 'Apples & Banans' as fruit from dual;", SQLDeveloper will do this...


Not really what is wanted! SQLDeveloper understands the SET DEFINE command as used in SQLPlus. So setting this value to OFF will disable value substitution. Easy!


The command is run like a normal SQL statement, After that, no more substitution is performed, the prompts go away and the ampersands behave as regular characters. This is only needed to be run once for a session too, so no need to keep running it as long as you're using the same connection/session.




-i