PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "CREATE"

Surya picture Surya · Dec 2, 2013 · Viewed 164.1k times · Source

What is the problem with this package as it is giving an error?

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE PKG_SHOW_CUST_DETAILS 
AS
    PROCEDURE SHOW_CUST_DETAILS( myArg VARCHAR2);
END PKG_SHOW_CUST_DETAILS;

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE BODY PKG_SHOW_CUST_DETAILS 
AS
    PROCEDURE SHOW_CUST_DETAILS(myArg VARCHAR2)
    IS
    BEGIN
        DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(myArg);        
    END SHOW_CUST_DETAILS;

END PKG_SHOW_CUST_DETAILS;
/

On compilation of the above script, I am getting the following errors:

SQL> show errors
Errors for PACKAGE PKG_SHOW_CUST_DETAILS:

LINE/COL ERROR
-------- -----------------------------------------------------------------
6/1      PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "CREATE"

The package is very simple and I am not able to compile it. I searched earlier answers on this error message and none of them did solve my problem. I am consistently getting this error for 2 more packages and I am stuck on this error message no matter what I do. I even tried to strip everything to the barest minimum as shown above, but the error message does not seem to go away. BTW I am executing this on command line SQL plus session after logging into my Oracle 11G database. YES- SET SERVEROUTPUT ON -- is executed and the error message has nothing to do with this command.

What am I missing?

Answer

Drumbeg picture Drumbeg · Dec 2, 2013

At line 5 there is a / missing.

There is a good answer on the differences between ; and / here.

Basically, when running a CREATE block via script, you need to use / to let SQLPlus know when the block ends, since a PL/SQL block can contain many instances of ;.