Bruno, Thanks for the response. The only problem is that FM removes all the leading spaces. I may have been unclear in stating my problem. I want the padding on the left; however, I don't want the extra space for the sign (+,-) that gets prepended to the string. This output shows what I mean: rnd=# select to_char(1234, '"|"9999"|"'); to_char --------- | 1234| (1 row) As you can see, not only do I get the four spaces I wanted, but I get one additional. That is what I was trying to get rid of and John's solution worked perfectly. It takes the extra space at the beginning out. I have a couple overloaded functions handling this as well as ensuring that I'm not dropping the negative sign on a number that actually is negative.
Anyway, thanks again for the response... On Wednesday 14 December 2005 01:09 pm, Bruno Wolff III saith: > On Tue, Dec 13, 2005 at 11:30:36 -0500, > > Terry Lee Tucker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Tuesday 13 December 2005 11:20 am, John Sidney-Woollett saith: > > > Not sure if there is a numeric formatting option that allows what you > > > want. > > > > > > But how about? > > > > > > substr(to_char(1029, '9,999'),2) > > > > That's so simple, I'm embarrased ;o) > > > > Thanks for the help... > > You can also us 'FM' to get rid of extra space. From the to_char docs: > FM suppresses leading zeroes and trailing blanks that would otherwise be > added to make the output of a pattern be fixed-width. > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org