Varchar & Varchar2 in Stored procedure

[Michelle Joe]

I have created this stored procedure in Oracle:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE get_product_code(prod_number IN VARCHAR) IS
CURSOR Get_code IS
<my_query_goes_here>
BEGIN
For Get_code_cur IN Get_code LOOP
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(Get_code_cur.name);
END LOOP;
END;


However, when i use SQL*Plus to view my stored procedure (command-->desc get_product_code'), i encountered the following:

Argument Name Type In/Out Default?
-------------------------- ------------------ ------ --------
PROD_NUMBER VARCHAR2 IN

I am curious why the type of the input parameter has been changed from VARCHAR to VARCHAR2?

[Adeel Ansari]

may be it is deprecated. applying guess

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

As of Oracle 8, VARCHAR and VARCHAR2 are the same. However Oracle recommends using VARCHAR2 because VARCHAR may change in the future.

I'm not sure why it is changing it automatically for you though.