EXECUTE IMMEDIATE
| Up | 34.14. Embedded SQL Commands | Home |

## EXECUTE IMMEDIATE

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE — dynamically prepare and execute a statement

## Synopsis

    EXECUTE IMMEDIATE string

## Description

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE immediately prepares and executes a dynamically specified SQL statement, without retrieving result rows.

## Parameters

`string`

  A literal string or a host variable containing the SQL statement to be executed.

## Notes

In typical usage, the `string` is a host variable reference to a string containing a dynamically-constructed SQL statement. The case of a literal string is not very useful; you might as well just write the SQL statement directly, without the extra typing of EXECUTE IMMEDIATE.

If you do use a literal string, keep in mind that any double quotes you might wish to include in the SQL statement must be written as octal escapes (`\042`) not the usual C idiom `\"`. This is because the string is inside an `EXEC SQL` section, so the ECPG lexer parses it according to SQL rules not C rules. Any embedded backslashes will later be handled according to C rules; but `\"` causes an immediate syntax error because it is seen as ending the literal.

## Examples

Here is an example that executes an INSERT statement using EXECUTE IMMEDIATE and a host variable named `command`:

    sprintf(command, "INSERT INTO test (name, amount, letter) VALUES ('db: ''r1''', 1, 'f')");
    EXEC SQL EXECUTE IMMEDIATE :command;

## Compatibility

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE is specified in the SQL standard.

| Up |
| Home |