SQL Developer

I want to execute the following statement in sqldeveloper

select '&sdfas' from dual

and expect the outcome to be the string "&sdfas"

but sqldeveloper keep asking me for the value of "sdfas" argument, and replace it.

I use sqldeveloper to run sql script to patch many pl/sql packages in my company. The packages, unfortunately, contain some "&" characters in rather critical position. And my last few days is spent chaotically trouble-shooting this.

Any method to escape "&" character ? I tried to export DDL with sqldeveloper itself but the outcome is still not being escaped properly.