LPAD

Syntax

lpad::=

Text description of lpad

Purpose

LPAD returns char1, left-padded to length n with the sequence of characters in char2; char2 defaults to a single blank. If char1 is longer than n, then this function returns the portion of char1 that fits in n.

Both char1 and char2 can be any of the datatypes CHAR, VARCHAR2, NCHAR, NVARCHAR2, CLOB, or NCLOB. The string returned is of VARCHAR2 datatype and is in the same character set as char1.

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

Examples

The following example left-pads a string with the characters "*" and ".":

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

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