Padding a string in Postgresql with rpad without truncating it
- by dmoebius
Using Postgresql 8.4, how can I right-pad a string with blanks without truncating it when it's too long?
The problem is that rpad truncates the string when it is actually longer than number of characters to pad. Example:
SELECT rpad('foo', 5); ==> 'foo ' -- fine
SELECT rpad('foo', 2); ==> 'fo' -- not good, I want 'foo' instead.
The shortest solution I found doesn't involve rpad at all:
SELECT 'foo' || repeat(' ', 5-length('foo')); ==> 'foo ' -- fine
SELECT 'foo' || repeat(' ', 2-length('foo')); ==> 'foo' -- fine, too
but this looks ugly IMHO. Note that I don't actually select the string 'foo' of course, instead I select from a column:
SELECT colname || repeat(' ', 30-length(colname)) FROM mytable WHERE ...
Is there a more elegant solution?
