Subject Re: fixed with string From Mervyn Bick <invalid@invalid.invalid> Date Fri, 23 Feb 2018 23:12:40 +0200 Newsgroups dbase.getting-started On 2018-02-23 10:37 PM, Mustansir Ghor wrote: > Dear All > > In the below statement how to make r.name to display fixed width string. > > select r.rno||', '||cast(r.name as char(25))||' - '||cast(r.unit  as char(20))  as pname from ipdreg r > If you're using localSQL with .dbf files I'm afraid you can't. When fields are concatenated in localSQl they are effectively trimmed and all the spaces are moved to the righthand end.  This is great when one wants to combine, say, lastname and firstname to form a fullname. 'Doe       '||', '||'John        ' returns 'Doe, John              ' without any further effort. In "proper" SQL (certainly in Firebird 2.5) and dBASE one needs to TRIM() the lastname so that the comma is adjacent to the text. Concatenation in localSQL also handles null values elegantly.  Any null value is replaced with "" and any other fields are added to the string without any problems. In dBASE and SQL null + 'whatever' results in null.  This means that if any of the fields being concatenated could possibly contain null one needs to test for this and deal with it. If you are using localSQL you will need to list the three fields separately in your select statement and then add them together in your program before the combined string is displayed.   You can then control the spacing to suit your needs. Mervyn.