[oracle] How to enter newline character in Oracle?

select col1, col2
    into name1, name2
    from table1
    where col1=col;

        m_sub := 'Subject ';
    m_msg := 'Hello '||name||' ,'||/n||/n||'Your order has been placed.';

Error(34,33): PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "/" when expecting one of the following: ( - + case mod new null avg count current max min prior sql stddev sum variance execute forall merge time timestamp interval date pipe

This question is related to oracle

The answer is


begin   
   dbms_output.put_line( 'hello' ||chr(13) || chr(10) || 'world' );
end;

According to the Oracle PLSQL language definition, a character literal can contain "any printable character in the character set". https://docs.oracle.com/cd/A97630_01/appdev.920/a96624/02_funds.htm#2876

@Robert Love's answer exhibits a best practice for readable code, but you can also just type in the linefeed character into the code. Here is an example from a Linux terminal using sqlplus:

SQL> set serveroutput on
SQL> begin   
  2  dbms_output.put_line( 'hello' || chr(10) || 'world' );
  3  end;
  4  /
hello
world

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> begin
  2  dbms_output.put_line( 'hello
  3  world' );
  4  end;
  5  /
hello
world

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Instead of the CHR( NN ) function you can also use Unicode literal escape sequences like u'\0085' which I prefer because, well you know we are not living in 1970 anymore. See the equivalent example below:

SQL> begin
  2  dbms_output.put_line( 'hello' || u'\000A' || 'world' );
  3  end;
  4  /
hello
world

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

For fair coverage I guess it is worth noting that different operating systems use different characters/character sequences for end of line handling. You've got to have a think about the context in which your program output is going to be viewed or printed, in order to determine whether you are using the right technique.

  • Microsoft Windows: CR/LF or u'\000D\000A'
  • Unix (including Apple MacOS): LF or u'\000A'
  • IBM OS390: NEL or u'\0085'
  • HTML: '<BR>'
  • XHTML: '<br />'
  • etc. etc.