For some reason, I have certain fields in a table, that are collections of chars. Chars of different length. Example:
create or replace type t_charray_1 as varray(5) of char(1);
create or replace type t_charray_2 as varray(5) of char(2);
create or replace type t_charray_3 as varray(5) of char(3);
create or replace type t_charray_4 as varray(5) of char(4);
create table mytable (
field1 number,
field2 t_charray_1,
field3 t_charray_3,
Also, I have a function that returns a (fixed length) string representation of a mytable
record. This function calls other functions that are returning the string representation of a given collection-typed field. Examples:
function to_chr(
p_array in t_charray_1,
pad_length in number,
p_list_length in number
) return char as
v_res varchar2(255) := '';
begin
for i in 1 .. p_list_length loop
if p_array is not null and p_array.exists(i) and p_array(i) is not null then
v_res := v_res || rpad(p_array(i), pad_length, ' ');
else
v_res := v_res || rpad(' ', pad_length, ' ');
end if;
end loop;
return v_res;
end to_chr;
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
function to_chr(
p_array in t_charray_2,
pad_length in number,
p_list_length in number
) return char as
v_res varchar2(255) := '';
begin
for i in 1 .. p_list_length loop
if p_array is not null and p_array.exists(i) and p_array(i) is not null then
v_res := v_res || rpad(p_array(i), pad_length, ' ');
else
v_res := v_res || rpad(' ', pad_length, ' ');
end if;
end loop;
return v_res;
end to_chr;
Note that these functions are overloaded versions of each other. The only difference in their signature is the type of the p_array
argument.
Please also note that the bodies of these functions are identical.
Motivation
I want to eliminate duplicate code. What are my choices?
EDIT I have heard of sys.anydata but never used it. Can it be a solution?