You can bypass the prompts for values associated with substitution variables by passing values to parameters in a script through the START command. You do this by placing an ampersand (&) followed by a numeral in the script in place of a substitution variable. Each time you run this script, START replaces each &1 in the file with the first value (called an argument) after START filename, then replaces each &2 with the second value, and so forth. For example, you could include the following commands in a script called MYFILE:

SELECT * FROM EMP_DETAILS_VIEW
WHERE JOB_ID='&1'
AND SALARY='&2';
In the following START command, SQL*Plus would substitute PU_CLERK for &1 and
3100 for &2 in the script MYFILE:
START MYFILE PU_CLERK 3100

When you use arguments with the START command, SQL*Plus DEFINEs each parameter in the script with the value of the appropriate argument.