REF CURSOR in Oracle

Source: http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Oracle/Working-with-REF-CURSOR-in-PL-SQL/

A REF CURSOR is basically a data type. A variable created based on such a data type is generally called a cursor variable. A cursor variable can be associated with different queries at run-time. The primary advantage of using cursor variables is their capability to pass result sets between sub programs (like stored procedures, functions, packages etc.).

declare
type r_cursor is REF CURSOR;
c_emp r_cursor;
en emp.ename%type;
begin
open c_emp for select ename from emp;
loop
fetch c_emp into en;
exit when c_emp%notfound;
dbms_output.put_line(en);
end loop;

close c_emp;
end;

In the previous section, I retrieved only one column (ename) of information using REF CURSOR. Now I would like to retrieve more than one column (or entire row) of information using the same. Let us consider the following example:

declare
type r_cursor is REF CURSOR;
c_emp r_cursor;
er emp%rowtype;
begin
open c_emp for select * from emp;
loop
fetch c_emp into er;
exit when c_emp%notfound;
dbms_output.put_line(er.ename ' - ' er.sal);
end loop;
close c_emp;
end;