Re: extra spaces

On 15 Dec 2000, Roland Roberts wrote:

> >>>>> "Soma" == Soma Interesting <dfunct(at)telus(dot)net> writes:
>
> Soma> All values called from the database are still padded with
> Soma> extra spaces from the column size in the database. Is this
> Soma> normal - I don't remember this happening when I was using
> Soma> MySQL. I thought usually the database stripped the extra
> Soma> spaces when it retrieved the values.
>
> I guess I missed the orginal post about the problem, but...
>
> Are your columns char() or varchar()? The former is padded in
> PostgreSQL but not MySQL. The latter is what you really want.

According to "Postgres: Introduction and Concepts", varchar is slower
than char. So if you (like me) want to use char and get rid of the
padding spaces, you may use a regex replacement, as in

while (@row=$result->fetchrow)
{
$row[0] =~ s/[\s]+$//;
}

in perl, or

$array["name"]=preg_replace("'[\s]+$'", "", $array["name"], -1);

in PHP.

--
Alvaro Herrera (<alvherre[(at)]protecne(dot)cl>)