Can I slice a PL/SQL collection?

Question

I've got a PL/SQL VArray that I'm filling with a BULK COLLECT query like this:

SELECT id
BULK COLLECT INTO myarray
FROM aTable

Now I'd like to pass a slice of this collection into another collection, something like this:

newarray := myarray(2..5)

This should pass the elements 2,3,4 and 5 from myarray to newarray.

I could write a loop and copy the elements, but is there a more compact way to do this?

Answer 1

Generally, you don't want to do this. You have a large collection in memory, and now you want to make a copy of it. That would use even more memory. Usually in cases like this you pass the entire collection around (by reference, not value) and also provide a start and stop index. Leave it to the other functions to only process the range specified.