Oracle SQL escape character (for a '&')

Question

While attempting to execute SQL insert statements using Oracle SQL Developer I keep generating an "Enter substitution value" prompt:

insert into agregadores_agregadores 
(
 idagregador,
 nombre,
 url
) 
values 
(
 2,
 'Netvibes',
 'http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?type=rss\&url='
);

I've tried escaping the special character in the query using the '\' above but I still can't avoid the ampersand, '&', causing a string substitution.

Answer 1

the & is the default value for DEFINE, which allows you to use substitution variables. I like to turn it off using

SET DEFINE OFF

then you won't have to worry about escaping or CHR(38).

Answer 2

|| chr(38) ||

This solution is perfect.

Answer 3

Set the define character to something other than &

SET DEFINE ~
create table blah (x varchar(20));
insert into blah (x) values ('blah&amp');
select * from blah;

X                    
-------------------- 
blah&amp 

Answer 4

insert into AGREGADORES_AGREGADORES (IDAGREGADOR,NOMBRE,URL)
values (2,'Netvibes',
'http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?type=rss' || chr(38) || 'amp;url=');

Answer 5

SELECT 'Free &' || ' Clear' FROM DUAL;

Answer 6

select 'one'||'&'||'two' from dual

Answer 7

The real answer is you need to set the escape character to '\': SET ESCAPE ON

The problem may have occurred either because escaping was disabled, or the escape character was set to something other than '\'. The above statement will enable escaping and set it to '\'.

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None of the other answers previously posted actually answer the original question. They all work around the problem but don't resolve it.

Answer 8

add this before your request

set define off;