durden_tyler,
I don't have words to thank you enough for such a detailed answer, for the SQL*PLUS documentation and for the perl script.
Being a sysadmin, this wasn't actually my responsibility, but the DBA's to come up with the right query that I could use in a shell script (which in turns, formats the results of a set of queries in html and sends the output via email). That is why my user does not have sufficient privileges to use sqlldr, create a view (another thing I thought of) or a temporary table.
Anyway, I was glad that this guy finally came up (or found in his docs) the right query to use with SQL*PLUS.
I am glad I submitted the post because I got such excellent answers.
Thanks again and look forward to learning more from Yoda, Robin, and you!