Reference Manual
   CHAPTER 9. SQL Statements     

FOR statement

Function 

Repeat the execution of a statement list once for each row in a cursor.

Syntax 

[ statement-label : ]
. . .FOR for-loop-name AS cursor-name
. . . CURSOR FOR statement
. . .[ FOR UPDATE | FOR READ ONLY ]
. . . DO statement-list
. . . END FOR [ statement-label ]

Permissions 

None.

Side effects 

None.

See also 

DECLARE CURSOR statement

FETCH statement

LEAVE statement

LOOP statement

Description 

The FOR statement is a control statement that allows you to execute a list of SQL statements once for each row in a cursor. The FOR statement is equivalent to a compound statement with a DECLARE for the cursor and a DECLARE of a variable for each column in the result set of the cursor followed by a loop that fetches one row from the cursor into the local variables and executes statement-list once for each row in the cursor.

The name and data type of each local variables is derived from the statement used in the cursor. With a SELECT statement, the data types will be the data types of the expressions in the select list. The names will be the select list item aliases, if they exist; otherwise, they will be the name of the columns. Any select list item that is not a simple column reference must have an alias. With a CALL statement, the names and data types will be taken from the RESULT clause in the procedure definition.

The LEAVE statement can be used to resume execution at the first statement after the END FOR. If the ending statement-label is specified, it must match the beginning statement-label.

Standards and compatibility 

• SQL/92     Persistent Stored Module feature.

• Sybase     Not supported by Adaptive Server Enterprise.

Example 

• The following fragment illustrates the use of the FOR loop.

FOR names AS curs CURSOR FOR
SELECT emp_lname
FROM employee
DO
   CALL search_for_name( emp_lname );
END FOR;