Assigning a sequence value to a variable in procedure for one or more tables

I discovered today that in Oracle 10g (and I presume in earlier versions also) it is not possible to directly assign a sequence value in to a PLSQL variable, hence neither of the 2 following examples will compile in 10g:

1: Try

PROCEDURE set_up_test_data(no_of_days NUMBER)
IS
  -- Doesn't compile
  nice_unique_number NUMBER := mysequence.nextval;
BEGIN
  -- do stuff here...
END set_up_test_data;

2: Try

PROCEDURE set_up_test_data(no_of_days NUMBER)
IS
  nice_unique_number NUMBER;
BEGIN
  -- Doesn't compile.
  nice_unique_number := mysequence.nextval;
  -- do stuff here...
END set_up_test_data;

A bit of googling suggests that a common workaround to this is to be do a SELECT INTO using the dual table, as below: 

PROCEDURE set_up_test_data(no_of_days NUMBER)
IS
  nice_unique_number NUMBER;
BEGIN
  --Works nicely
  SELECT mysequence.nextval INTO nice_unique_number FROM dual;
  -- do stuff here...

  e.g. INSERT INTO TABLE_1 (COLUMN1, COLUMN2, COLUMN3) VALUES (nice_unique_number, value.table_1.column1, value_2.table_1.column2);
END set_up_test_data; 

Note: This no appears to be an issue as of Oracle 11g (search for Straight Sequences).

source: http://www.eddgrant.com/blog/EdD/entry/assigning_a_sequence_value_to