NEXT v18

NEXT is a method that returns the subscript that follows a specified subscript.

Syntax

The method takes a single argument: the subscript that you are testing for. The syntax is:

<collection>.NEXT(<subscript>)

Where collection is the name of the collection.

If the specified subscript is less than the first subscript in the collection, the function returns the first subscript. If the subscript doesn't have a successor, NEXT returns NULL. If you specify a NULL subscript, PRIOR doesn't return a value.

Example

This example uses NEXT to return the subscript that follows subscript 10 in the associative array, sparse_arr:

DECLARE
    TYPE sparse_arr_typ IS TABLE OF NUMBER INDEX BY BINARY_INTEGER;
    sparse_arr      sparse_arr_typ;
BEGIN
    sparse_arr(-100)  := -100;
    sparse_arr(-10)   := -10;
    sparse_arr(0)     := 0;
    sparse_arr(10)    := 10;
    sparse_arr(100)   := 100;
    DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('NEXT element: ' || sparse_arr.next(10));
END;

NEXT element: 100