The PL/SQL Challenge (www.plsqlchallenge.com) offers a daily quiz on the PL/SQL language, through which thousands of Oracle technologists demonstrate and deepen their knowledge of PL/SQL. This blog contains posts by the PL/SQL Challenge founder, Steven Feuerstein, as well as comments from players.
15 September 2010
14 September quiz: What about the extra line in FORMAT_ERROR_STACK? (1382)
The 14 September quiz asked:
Which of the following blocks display (without the quotation marks) "ORA-20000: Balance too low!"?
Several players wrote to remind me "None of the answers will display JUST the indicated message since there will be an extra CR/LF at the end (one for FORMAT_ERROR_STACK and one for PUT_LINE)."
I agree and hopefully we can all agree: the DBMS_UTILITY.FORMAT_ERROR_STACK function returns the error stack, plus an additional line feed character.
And if I had asked "Which of the blocks display absolutely nothing more than "ORA-20000: Balance too low!" then I suppose I would have to score all choices as wrong.
Since I only asked which would show that string (and not just that string), though, I believe the scoring is correct.
And I sure hope that going forward I will write my questions and choices so that this additional character will never play a role in determining whether a choice is correct or incorrect.
Cheers, Steven
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
If it wasn't for that quiz a week or two ago where someone commented on the CR/LF, how many would actually have known? I for sure didn't and I am also not losing sleep over it ;-)
ReplyDeleteFor the sake of accuracy "plus an additional line feed character" is actually two characters in Windows: ASCII 13,10 and a single character ASCII 10 in UNIX. (Can't believe I'm actually writing this ;-)
I just hope such "discoveries" or "copycats thereof" will not develop into a challenge of its own.
Oddly enough, Mike, Oracle adds JUST a line feed character to the string. Not TWO characters. And this was in Windows.
ReplyDelete