Thank you so much for the SQL and PL/SQL here.
This was almost what I wanted.
I needed to do it in a 9i database.
So, I tried using your NO-XML solution because
9i doesn’t have the “regexp_substr” function.
Also, I wanted to use the wildcard ‘%’ in my
search (again, since 9i doesn’t have the
regular expression function).

So, I modified your code slightly to use
the “CASE” statement in your NO-XML solution
and it works great.
I included my change below.
Thanks again,
David
This was such a time saver.

—
create or replace function search_in_table(
owner varchar2,
table_name varchar2,
search_string varchar2)
return varchar2 is
stmt varchar2(32700);
col varchar2(32700);
begin
stmt := ’select ‘;
for c in (
select column_name
from all_tab_columns
where all_tab_columns.table_name=search_in_table.table_name
and all_tab_columns.owner=search_in_table.owner
and data_type like ‘%CHAR%’ )
loop
stmt := stmt || ‘max(case when “‘ || c.column_name ||
‘” LIKE ‘'’ || search_string || ‘'’ then ‘'’ || c.column_name
|| ‘ ‘'’ || ‘ else null end) || ‘;
end loop;
stmt:= stmt||’nvl2(count(*),null,null) from “‘||
owner||’”.”‘||table_name||’”‘;
execute immediate stmt into col;
return col;
end;
/

… from user_tables where data_type=’CHAR’ …