Handling the & Character in Toad for Oracle

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In Toad Or Oracle SQL*Plus, the & character is treated as the beginning of a substitution variable. This can cause unexpected behavior when your script contains & for other reasons—like inside a string literal.

For example, the following SQL statement will trigger a prompt:

SQL
SELECT 'Tom & Jerry' FROM dual;

To avoid this, you can disable substitution by running:

SQL
SET DEFINE OFF

This tells SQL*Plus not to treat & as a special character. It’s good practice to restore the default behavior at the end of your script:

SQL
SET DEFINE ON

If you’re using a tool like TOAD, you can find this setting in the editor window menu. The exact location may vary depending on the TOAD version, but the functionality is the same.

🔑 Key Phrase:

Oracle SQL Plus ampersand, SET DEFINE OFF, substitution variable issue

📄 Meta Description:

Learn how to prevent issues caused by the & character in Oracle SQL*Plus scripts by using the SET DEFINE OFF command. Simple fix for substitution variable errors.

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