RE :Strange workings of Oracle

Rahul, Shreepal,

   If I may venture an opinion, I think that the LPAD() is a trick to have the name of the column always appear as 'CACHE' when executing a SELECT under SQL*Plus. Otherwise, you would have had something like :

      C
      -
      N

which might be more difficult to interpret. Now, I agree that having 'YES' or 'NO' wouldn't have cost much ...

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  Stephane Faroult
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  Oriole Corporation
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> 

> Shreepad, found this line in the view text for dba_tables...

> lpad(decode(bitand(t.flags, 8), 8, 'Y', 'N'),5),

> 

> why use LPAD ?? and why not use YES AND NO if the columns is varchar2(5) ??

> 

> rahul

> 

> > 

> > 

> > 

> > Hi  everyone,

> > 

> > I noticed something very strange when i tried to cache a table.

> > 

> > 1) I cached a table

> > alter table emp cache;

> > 2) Did a describe on dba_tables

> > One of the columns is :

> > CACHE                                    VARCHAR2(5)

> > 3) SQL> select distinct cache from dba_tables ;

> > 

> > CACHE

> > -----

> >     N

> >     Y

> > 4)SQL> select table_name,cache from dba_tables where cache='Y' ;

> > 

> > no rows selected

> > 

> > 5)select table_name,cache from dba_tables where cache like '%Y%';

> > TABLE_NAME                     CACHE

> > ------------------------------ -----

> > EMP                                Y

> > 

> > 6) SQL> select table_name,cache from

> >  dba_tables where cache='    Y';

> > 

> > TABLE_NAME                     CACHE

> > ------------------------------ -----

> > EMP                                Y

> > 

> > Gave 4 spaces before y

> > 

> > 

> > 

> > 

> > If the column is varchar2 shouldn't it put only Y rather than

> > prefixing it with spaces.

> > 

> > Even for Datatype char , space are postfixed .

> > 

> > I found this on Oracle 7.3.4 and Oracle 8.1.5

> > 

> > 

> >                                    Thanks