How to capture the return value of the oracle function in shell script?

One way to return a value is to echo it. Anything sent to STDOUT can be caught. Something like this:

#!/bin/ksh
GetHostName()
{
   typeset Host
   Host=$(uname -n)
   echo $Host
}

MyHost=$(GetHostName)

You can capture multiple values using this technique:

#!/bin/ksh
GetHostName()
{
   typeset Host OS
   Host=$(uname -n)
   OS=$(uname -s)
   echo $Host $OS
}

GetHostName | read MyHost MyOS

If you need to prompt for input inside the script, use this format:

read Var1?"Enter variable 1: "

This does not sent the prompt to STDOUT.

If you REALLY need to put data to the screen inside the function, try this:

#!/bin/ksh
GetHostName()
{
   typeset Host Screen
   Screen=$1
   echo "Gathering host info" > $Screen
   Host=$(uname -n)
   echo $Host
}

Term=$(tty)
MyHost=$(GetHostName $Term)

sqlplus -s $USER/$PASS << ENDSQL   >mylog.txt   2> /dev/null
set define off
set head off
whenever sqlerror exit sql.sqlcode
select fn_get_current_date_for_region('USA') from dual;
............add oracle statement to print "RETURN_VALUE IS :BLABLA"
 ENDSQL

At your ksh script

ORA_RET=`grep RETURN_VALUE mylog.txt  | cut -f2 -d":" `
echo $ORA_RET

Oops, I completely misread the question. What an idiot!!!

Probably better off doing this from Perl using the DBI module for Oracle (see www.cpam.org).

You'll have much better ability to get return values, error codes, row counts, etc., etc.

chris_calabrese:
Could you provide an exmaple for that? I want to learn that also

maybe i'm off base here, but would something like this work for your original question?

B_YOUR_VARIABLE=""
B_YOUR_VARIABLE=`sqlplus -s $LOGON_NAME/$LOGON_PASSWD @$HOME/YOUR_DIRECTORY/YOUR_SCRIPT.sql`

i use this to get the value returned by sql scripts into UNIX variables. just a thought....

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