Question:  How does the PL/SQL show errors command work?

Answer:  When you run PL/SQL the code is interpreted at runtime, and you may see these types of errors:

• Syntax errors:  These are indicated by the "Warning: Procedure created with compilation errors" message.  You can display the error with the "show errors" SQL*Plus command).
  
• Semantic errors:  These are invalid table or column names.
  
•  Run time errors:  This is a a non-zero Oracle database error code.

For more details, see my notes on PL/SQL debugging techniques.

Show errors command

To see PL/SQL interpreter errors, you can use the SQL*Plus “show errors” command: as seen in the "show errors" example

SQL> create or replace procedure example_defaults
  2    (n_1 in number := 5,
  3     n_2 in number := 6,
  4     n_3 in number := 7)
  5  as
  6  begin
  7    n_1 := n_2 + n_3;
  8  end;
  9  / 

Warning: Procedure created with compilation errors. 

SQL> show errors

Errors for PROCEDURE EXAMPLE_DEFAULTS: 

LINE/COL ERROR
-------- ------------------------------------------------      PLS-00363: expression 'N_1' cannot be used as an assignment target 

For complete details on using the show errors command, see the Easy Oracle books.

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