How to update LONG column in Oracle 9i

Hi,

As I have not been near the older versions of Oracle for what seems like decades now I am having great trouble trying to achieve what should be simple.

I am working with a third party Oracle 9i based application that uses those wonderful LONG columns everywhere. As it is a third party application I am unable to update the columns to CLOBs and i need to acieve the following:

i need to update a remarks column (LONG) by adding some additonal text, e.g. UPDATE Set REMARKS = REMARKS|| but I receive the ORA-00932: inconsistent datatypes: expected NUMBER got LONG error message.

How can I update  a long column? Metalink and web searches have so far failed me so I am hoping somewhere out there can remember far enough back to tell me how to do this.

Regards

Chedgey

Mine isn't much prettier:
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drop table tab1;

create table tab1( col1 long );

insert into tab1 values ('Hello');
insert into tab1 values ('Goodbye');
commit;

declare
      myLong long;
begin
      for i in ( select rowid, col1 from tab1 ) loop
            myLong := i.col1 || ' World';
            update tab1 set col1 = myLong where rowid=i.rowid;
      end loop;
end;
/

select * from tab1;