Re: Varchar search is very literal

This is just the way it is:
varchar means varying length semantics, ie strings are not padded before comparison
char means fixed length semantics, strings are padded before comparison. I don't know why you want to store redundant spaces, you could of course always use rtrim before insert and update to make sure, they don't reach your database.

Hth,

Sybrand Bakker, Oracle DBA

<jgotthelf_at_my-deja.com> wrote in message news:8ojqfu$8k5$1_at_nnrp1.deja.com...
> Hi,
>
> I have found that with a varchar2 field that searches seem to care
> about trailing spaces, i.e.:
>
> create table fred (fld1 varchar(10))
> insert into fred values ('cat ') -- 4 spaces after 'cat'
> commit
>
> select * from fred where fld1 = 'cat'
>
> returns zero rows. With regular 'Char' this works just fine.
>
> Is there a way to alter this behavior, or is this just the way it is?
>
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
Received on Wed Aug 30 2000 - 16:35:30 CDT