I'm not being disputatious but every time I try to figure it out by brain goes TILT.

What is the rationale behind storing trailing spaces but not using them in comparisons?

I can only come up with one theory, and if one of my staff when I ran an IT Department had come up with it I would had set him/her to training the director's secretary in using a word processor for 6 months. If that didn't work I had a really great penance but I'm not going to mention it in polite company

The theory:

Its in case you want to catenate the column with another one and have a space separating them.

I can, with the null problem see a valid reason for storing a single space but smoke comes out of my ears when I try to figure out comparing - is it a trailing space or not? If so what is it trailing?

Roy Lambert

Roy,

<< What is the rationale behind storing trailing spaces but not using them
in comparisons? >>

Are you talking about CHARs, VARCHARs, or both ?

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim


I suppose its VARCHARs really cos I understand CHARs are right padded and if you're going to pad them it makes sense to ignore the trailing spaces in compares, and since they're fixed length you'd have to pad on display/printing.

Roy Lambert

Roy,

<< I suppose its VARCHARs really cos I understand CHARs are right padded and
if you're going to pad them it makes sense to ignore the trailing spaces in
compares, and since they're fixed length you'd have to pad on
display/printing. >>

Well, the idea with VARCHARs is just like any other column - we don't
arbitrarily modify the data when it is input.  What is input, is what is
stored, period.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim

>Well, the idea with VARCHARs is just like any other column - we don't
>arbitrarily modify the data when it is input. What is input, is what is
>stored, period.

I thought in an earlier post you said it was part of the standard, so if not maybe you can be prevailed on......

Not to bothered though since I've already altered my edit component to trim things for me. Seemed easier than loads of triggers.

Roy Lambert

Roy,

<< I thought in an earlier post you said it was part of the standard, so if
not maybe you can be prevailed on...... >>

Yes, it's part of the standard also.  I was simply explaining the rationale
behind it.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim


This is why my brain falls over

"What is input, is what is stored, period."

Now we're going to ignore some of what is stored when we do a comparison so we didn't really believe you meant it.

As Spock would say - it does not compute

Roy Lambert

ps


As I said at the beginning I'm not trying to be awkward I'd just like to know and understand the thinking behind it. If you don't know either fair enough.

Roy Lambert

Tim


Just realised my ps could be read as a dig at you - it isn't.

Roy Lambert

Roy,

<< Now we're going to ignore some of what is stored when we do a comparison
so we didn't really believe you meant it. >>

Only for searching purposes.  This doesn't include display, etc.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com