Hi Tom,
Trust you are doing well.I have bought your two books "Expert Oracle" and "Effective Oracle by Design" and I must admit, I have become your BIG fan.

I have a question on variable scope and its accessibility in PL/SQL.

Suppose I have a block as below.

Declare -- Block 1
x number :=1;
Begin
Declare -- Block 2
x number :=2;
Begin
Declare -- Block 3
x number:=3;
Begin
-- n inner blocks;
End;
End;
End;

Now, the question is if I have same variable in nested blocks, and I want to access the variable (of same name that of inner block) of outer block ( Variable of block 2 in Block 3), how do I access it.More, If I want to access variable of same name that exists in nth outer block variable ?
Say from Block 3 variable of Block 1 ?

Thanks in Advance,

Vaijanath
India

ops$tkyte%ORA10GR2> <<topmost>>
  2  declare
  3     x varchar2(30) := 'top most';
  4  begin
  5     <<middle>>
  6     declare
  7        x varchar2(30) := 'middle';
  8     begin
  9        <<bottom>>
 10        declare
 11           x varchar2(30) := 'bottom';
 12        begin
 13           dbms_output.put_line( 'currently in scope is ' || x );
 14           dbms_output.put_line( topmost.x );
 15           dbms_output.put_line( middle.x );
 16           dbms_output.put_line( bottom.x );
 17        end;
 18     end;
 19  end;
 20  /
currently in scope is bottom
top most
middle
bottom

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.