How to find which junk characters are there in the string

Question

Hi Guys in my employee table ,I have a field name emp_name
and the data inside one of the record is 'BUSH ';
after trimming it ... length(trim(emp_name)) ... I expected the length to be 4,but it still returns 5.So I am wondering what that extra characters after H is.
Can some one tell me how to find it.
thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hmmm. What you describe is not the behaviour I would expect from a CHAR(10) column. I would expect this:
SQL> CREATE TABLE bt (col1 CHAR(10));
Table created.
SQL> INSERT INTO bt VALUES ('BUSH ');
1 row created.
SQL> SELECT length(col1) FROM bt;
LENGTH(COL1)
          10
SQL> SELECT length(trim(col1)) FROM bt;
LENGTH(TRIM(COL1))
                 4
SQL> What version of the database are you using? Also, what does this query give you?
SELECT ascii(substr(ename, 5,1))
FROM emp
WHERE  substr(ename,1,4) = 'BUSH';Cheers, APC