Re: Trailing Spaces on VARCHAR2 Data

On Fri, 11 Dec 1998, Gene Hubert wrote:

> I'm running Oracle 8.0.3 on NT 4.0.
>

> I occasionally run across data in varchar2 columns that has
> trailing spaces. Comparisons on this data will fail without an
> rtrim or adding the right number of spaces to what is being
> compared. Can anyone explain how varchar2 data ends up with
> trailing spaces? I thouhgt this was not possbile.
>


Hi Gene.
VARCHAR2 is a variable length character type (unlike CHAR, which is fixed). What may be happening (I'm not 100 % sure) is if you're inserting data that's has spaces on the end, it will become part of data for that row.

I don't think that VARCHAR2 automattically strips spaces. I vaguely recall having problems cos of this in the past. Make sure the data going in is 'clean', or strip it afterwords.

Hope this helps...

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