Postgres Pro
Downloads
Home   >   mailing lists

Thread: Trailing spaces - is there an easier way?

Trailing spaces - is there an easier way?

From
"Dean Gibson (DB Administrator)"
Date:
I'm sure this has been asked before, but I couldn't find it:<br /><br /> I have a "zzz CHAR (8)" field.  It needs to
beCHAR because trailing spaces need to be ignored for most operations.  However, I need to concatenate it with another
(literal)string and need the spaces to be significant in that operation.  The <b>ONLY WAY</b> I could find to do it  in
v9.0.1was (represented in the following function):<br /><br /><font color="#000099"><tt>CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION
padded(field CHAR ) RETURNS TEXT<br />     RETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT<br />     IMMUTABLE<br />     LANGUAGE SQL AS
$SQL$<br/>         SELECT RPAD( $1, OCTET_LENGTH( $1 ) )<br />     $SQL$;</tt></font><br /><br /> And then of course I
write:<br/><br /><font color="#000099"><tt>SELECT padded( zzz ) || '/' || ...<br /></tt></font><br /> Is there a better
way?<br/><br />

Re: Trailing spaces - is there an easier way?

From
Pavel Stehule
Date:
2010/11/4 Dean Gibson (DB Administrator) <postgresql@ultimeth.com>:
> I'm sure this has been asked before, but I couldn't find it:
>
> I have a "zzz CHAR (8)" field.  It needs to be CHAR because trailing spaces
> need to be ignored for most operations.  However, I need to concatenate it
> with another (literal) string and need the spaces to be significant in that
> operation.  The ONLY WAY I could find to do it  in v9.0.1 was (represented
> in the following function):
>
> CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION padded( field CHAR ) RETURNS TEXT
>     RETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT
>     IMMUTABLE
>     LANGUAGE SQL AS $SQL$
>         SELECT RPAD( $1, OCTET_LENGTH( $1 ) )
>     $SQL$;
>
> And then of course I write:
>
> SELECT padded( zzz ) || '/' || ...
>
> Is there a better way?
>
>

nic=# SELECT 'AAAA    '::char(6) || 'bbbb';?column?
----------AAAAbbbb
(1 row)

Time: 2.710 ms
nic=# SELECT 'AAAA    '::char(6)::cstring || 'bbbb'; ?column?
------------AAAA  bbbb
(1 row)


regards

Pavel Stehule

Re: Trailing spaces - is there an easier way?

From
Kenneth Marshall
Date:
On Thu, Nov 04, 2010 at 08:42:21PM +0100, Pavel Stehule wrote:
> 2010/11/4 Dean Gibson (DB Administrator) <postgresql@ultimeth.com>:
> > I'm sure this has been asked before, but I couldn't find it:
> >
> > I have a "zzz CHAR (8)" field.?? It needs to be CHAR because trailing spaces
> > need to be ignored for most operations.?? However, I need to concatenate it
> > with another (literal) string and need the spaces to be significant in that
> > operation.?? The ONLY WAY I could find to do it?? in v9.0.1 was (represented
> > in the following function):
> >
> > CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION padded( field CHAR ) RETURNS TEXT
> > ?????? RETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT
> > ?????? IMMUTABLE
> > ?????? LANGUAGE SQL AS $SQL$
> > ?????????????? SELECT RPAD( $1, OCTET_LENGTH( $1 ) )
> > ?????? $SQL$;
> >
> > And then of course I write:
> >
> > SELECT padded( zzz ) || '/' || ...
> >
> > Is there a better way?
> >
> >
> 
> nic=# SELECT 'AAAA    '::char(6) || 'bbbb';
>  ?column?
> ----------
>  AAAAbbbb
> (1 row)
> 
> Time: 2.710 ms
> nic=# SELECT 'AAAA    '::char(6)::cstring || 'bbbb';
>   ?column?
> ------------
>  AAAA  bbbb
> (1 row)
> 
> 
> regards
> 
> Pavel Stehule
> 

Here is a link to some useful other pseudo types:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/interactive/datatype-pseudo.html

Regards,
Ken