105. LPAD - llighter/database GitHub Wiki

LPAD Oracle Help Centor

Syntax

Purpose

LPAD returns expr1, left-padded to length n characters with the sequence of characters in expr2. This function is useful for formatting the output of a query.

If you do not specify expr2, then the default is a single blank. If expr1 is longer than n, then this function returns the portion of expr1 that fits in n.

The argument n is the total length of the return value as it is displayed on your terminal screen. In some multibyte character sets, the display length of a character string can differ from the number of characters in the string.

Examples

SELECT LPAD('Page 1',15,'*.') "LPAD example"
   FROM DUAL;

LPAD example
---------------
*.*.*.*.*Page 1