PUTF Procedure

This procedure is a formatted PUT procedure. It works like a limited printf(). The format string can contain any text, but the character sequences %s and \n have special meaning.

%s	Substitute this sequence with the string value of the next argument in the argument list.
\n	Substitute with the appropriate platform-specific line terminator.

See also PUTF_NCHAR Procedure.

Syntax

UTL_FILE.PUTF (
   file    IN FILE_TYPE,
   format  IN VARCHAR2,
   [arg1   IN VARCHAR2  DEFAULT NULL,
   . . .  
   arg5    IN VARCHAR2  DEFAULT NULL]); 

Parameters

Table 77-17 PUTF Procedure Parameters

Parameters	Description
file	Active file handle returned by an FOPEN call.
format	Format string that can contain text as well as the formatting characters \n and %s.
arg1..arg5	From one to five operational argument strings. Argument strings are substituted, in order, for the %s formatters in the format string. If there are more formatters in the format parameter string than there are arguments, then an empty string is substituted for each %s for which there is no argument.

Example

The following example writes the lines:

Hello, world!
I come from Zork with greetings for all earthlings.

my_world  varchar2(4) := 'Zork';
...
PUTF(my_handle, 'Hello, world!\nI come from %s with %s.\n',
                my_world,
                'greetings for all earthlings');

If there are more %s formatters in the format parameter than there are arguments, then an empty string is substituted for each %s for which there is no matching argument.

Exceptions

INVALID_FILEHANDLE
INVALID_OPERATION
WRITE_ERROR