Oracle RPAD

The Oracle RPAD() function returns a string right-padded with specified characters to a certain length.

Syntax

The following illustrates the syntax of the Oracle RPAD() function:

RPAD(source_string, target_length [,pad_string]);

Arguments

The Oracle RPAD() function accepts three arguments:

1) source_string

is the string that will be padded from the right end.

2) target_length

is the length of the result string after padding.

Note that if the target_length is less than the length of the source_string, then RPAD() function will shorten down the source_string to the target_length without doing any padding.

3) pad_string

is a string to be padded.The pad_stringis optional and it defaults to a single space if you don’t specify it explicitly.

Return value

The RPAD() function returns a string with right-padded characters whose data type is either VARCHAR2 or NVARCHAR2, which depends on the data type of the source_string.

Examples

The following statement pads a string with the characters (+) from the right end:

SELECT
  RPAD( 'XYZ', 6, '+' )
FROM
  dual;

The result is:

'XYZ+++'

In this example, the source string is 'XYZ' which has length 3. Because the target length is 6, the RPAD() function padded 3 more characters (+) from the right end of the string 'XYZ'

See the following example.

SELECT
  RPAD( 'Testing', 4, '-' )
FROM
  dual;

In this statement, the length of the source string 'Testing' is 7 while the target length is 4. So the RPAD() function truncates 3 characters right end of the source string which results in the following string:

'Test'

Sometimes, you want to represent data distribution with text graphically. In this case, you can use RPAD() function to do so.

See the following cutomers table in the sample database:

The following statement uses the RPAD() function to output the bar chart of customers’ credit limits:

SELECT
  name, 
  credit_limit, 
  RPAD( '$', credit_limit / 100, '$' )
FROM
  customers
ORDER BY
  name;

In this example, customers who have credit 100 will get one character $.  For ones who have credit limits with the multiples of 100, will get the number of corresponding $ returned by the RPAD() function.

The following picture illustrates the result:

In this tutorial, you have learned how to use the Oracle RPAD() function to pad a string from the right end by specified characters to a particular length.