Stop removal of leading blanks on output

I want to output lines of text, indented a number of spaces, from a PL/SQL program. Using both the DBMS_OUTPUT package with SPOOL and the technique of outputting the data to a temp table, and spooling that to a file, the leading blanks are removed, scewing up my formatting.

How do I stop this?

For now, I put a vertical bar(|) in as the first character, and take that into consideration as I format the text. It doesn't look real pretty, but at least the rest of the formatting stays put. Then for reports that are given to other people, I just edit and remove the bar. But editing doesn't work for returning the output to the screen.

I have tried turning TRIMSPOOL and TRIMOUT off, thinking maybe they worked on both ends, not just the right side of the line. But it did no good.

I have also tried putting non-printable characters in as the first character, but then I get a black block in it's place.

Anyway, if any knows how I can do this, I would appreciate it.

Thanks. Received on Thu May 29 1997 - 00:00:00 CEST