How to avoid variable substitution in Oracle SQL Developer with 'trinidad & tobago'

Question

When I try to execute this statement in Oracle SQL Developer 2.1 a dialog box "Enter Substitution Variable" pops up asking for a replacement value for TOBAGO,

update t set country = 'Trinidad and Tobago' where country = 'trinidad & tobago';

How can I avoid this without resorting to chr(38) or u'trinidad \0026 tobago' which both obscure the purpose of the statement?

Answer 1

Call this before the query:

set define off;

Alternatively, hacky:

update t set country = 'Trinidad and Tobago' where country = 'trinidad &' || ' tobago';

Answer 2

In SQL*Plus putting SET DEFINE ? at the top of the script will normally solve this. Might work for Oracle SQL Developer as well.