Thursday, January 10, 2013

Lpad Function


In Oracle/PLSQL, the lpad function pads the left-side of a string with a specific set of characters (when string1 is not null).

Syntax

The syntax for the lpad function is:
lpad( string1, padded_length, [ pad_string ] )
string1 is the string to pad characters to (the left-hand side).
padded_length is the number of characters to return. If the padded_length is smaller than the original string, the lpad function will truncate the string to the size of padded_length.
pad_string is optional. This is the string that will be padded to the left-hand side of string1. If this parameter is omitted, the lpad function will pad spaces to the left-side of string1.

Applies To

  • Oracle 11g, Oracle 10g, Oracle 9i, Oracle 8i

For Example

lpad('tech', 7);would return '   tech'
lpad('tech', 2);would return 'te'
lpad('tech', 8, '0');would return '0000tech'
lpad('tech on the net', 15, 'z');would return 'tech on the net'
lpad('tech on the net', 16, 'z');would return 'ztech on the net'