Subject: Re: Blank-padding
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 10:04:39 -0500
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Thread-Topic: [SQL] Blank-padding
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From: "Shaun Watts" <swatts@computer-systems.com>
To: "Scott Marlowe" <smarlowe@g2switchworks.com>,
	"Chris Travers" <chris@travelamericas.com>
Cc: "Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>,
	"Dean Gibson (DB Administrator)" <postgresql4@ultimeth.com>,
	"pgsql-sql" <pgsql-sql@postgresql.org>


I also have an issue with the blank padding at the end of my fields.
Is there any way to eliminate the blank padding at the end of character
fields in a table.

Such as you have field X as a char(6), but storing "abc" in it.  Well
postgres seems to add the padding on the end of string that is being
stored.
So it is stored as "abc   " instead of "abc".  I don't want that padding
there.

I am fairly new to Postgres and have only dealt with Informix database
systems,
which don't store data this way.

Any help is very much appreciated.

Thanks,
Shaun


Shaun Watts
Programmer/Analyst
=20
CSI - Computer Systems, Inc.         Phone:  317.913.4160
12975 Parkside Drive                          Fax:  317.913.4175
Fishers, IN  46038                       Toll Free:  800.860.1274
=20
"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift."  --
Steve Prefontaine

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-sql-owner@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-sql-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Scott Marlowe
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 9:46 AM
To: Chris Travers
Cc: Tom Lane; Dean Gibson (DB Administrator); pgsql-sql
Subject: Re: [SQL] Blank-padding

On Sat, 2005-10-22 at 00:39, Chris Travers wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>=20
> >"Dean Gibson (DB Administrator)" <postgresql4@ultimeth.com> writes:
> > =20
> >
> >>I remember that discussion, and I was for the change.  However, upon

> >>doing some testing after reading the above, I wonder if the=20
> >>blank-stripping isn't too aggressive.  I have a CHAR(6) field (say,
> >>named Z) that has "abc   " in it.  Suppose I want to append "x" to
Z,=20
> >>with any leading spaces in Z PRESERVED.
> >>   =20
> >>
> >
> >(You meant trailing spaces, I assume.)  Why exactly would you want to

> >do that?  You decided by your choice of datatype that the trailing=20
> >spaces weren't significant.
> >
> I once built a telecom billing app where this might be important=20
> (fixed length fields).  Lets say you have fixed length fields defined=20
> as
> char(n) datatypes.  You may want to build a query to generate billing=20
> records like:
> select field1 || field2 || field3 || field4 || field5 ... AS=20
> bill_record FROM lec_billing_entries;
>=20
> It seels to me that I would expect trailing spaces to be preserved in=20
> these cases.  Having an implicit rtrim function is asking for
problems.
> Personally I would rather have to call rtrim explicitly than have the=20
> backend treat the concatenation differently than if I do it on the
client.

If I rememberate correctificantly, this problem is or was caused by the
|| operator using the same internal logic for varchar / text AND char.=20
Tom, is it reasonable / doable to have || have a different set of
internal functions for each of those types.

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