white spaces being filled in char(N) type field

• Unnikrishnan.C

  Old Hand

  Points: 320

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  December 1, 2004 at 6:46 am

  #60453

  Hi,

  I have defined a column of data type is char(15). But I noticed that if I insert a record where the data for this column is smaller than 15 in length, blank spaces are filled in. This causes problem while taking joins.

  Why blank spaces are filled in this column to make its length 15?

  I am using MS SQL server 2000.

  Thanks and Regards,

  Unnic

• Frank Kalis

  SSC Guru

  Points: 111183

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  December 1, 2004 at 6:52 am

  #532047

  That's because you use CHAR instead of VARCHAR. CHAR is fixed length no matter how many characters you actually entered.

  --
  Frank Kalis
  Microsoft SQL Server MVP
  Webmaster: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs
  My blog: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs/frankkalis/[/url]

• Calvin Lawson

  SSChampion

  Points: 11030

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  December 2, 2004 at 7:08 pm

  #532327

  if you must use char and the spaces are giving you grief, you can use a "rtrim" function:

  select rtrim(cast('1' as char(5)))

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