The figure in sut81003.gif shows an example of field conversion.

There is a datafile that contains two fields, both defined in the SQL*Loader control file as CHAR(5). Field 1 contains the letters aaa as data. Field 2 contains the letters bbb as data.

In the database into which the fields are to be inserted, there are two columns. Column 1 is defined as a fixed-length CHAR column of length 5. Therefore, when the data from Field 1 in the datafile is inserted, the data is shown as left-justified in that column, which remains 5 bytes wide. The extra space on the right is padded with blanks.

Column 2 is defined as a varying-length field with a maximum length of 5 bytes. The data from the datafile for Field 2 is left-justified. Therefore, when the data is inserted into column 2 in the database, it is shown as left-justified as well, but the length remains 3 bytes.