(libpq question) Holy cow, what's all this fluff?!

Greetings,

When using the PQgetvalue() function of libpq, the results, at least char
fields, return the value in full, i.e. a char(20) field with the text
"Matthew" for example returns "Matthew " (all 20 characters,
padded with spaces).

I'm sure there is a good reason for this? But, none the less, I would like
to turn it off if I can, otherwise I'm off to writing a small function to
strip the spaces off. This is kind of a pain though because I don't need
to modify the values, just display them, or fill a browser's form fields
with values from the database (which is my biggest need to strip the
fluff). The docs say that I should not access the structure holding query
results, so I will have to malloc each value, copy it, strip the fluff,
send it out on its way, and release the memory. More housekeeping, yuck!
Not to mention more processing time. Please tell me there is a way to get
field values with libpq that are exact to the content length and not the
field length.

Thanks,
Matthew