Incorrect number format appearing in report

Question

This might sound like a really silly question, but I've not had much need to faff around with changing number formats.
We have a report which is taking a number column and outputting it directly, but when the number is something like 0.1234 it strips the 0 and outputs it as .1234.
I imagine that this is something to do with the nls-settings of the client producing the report, but I need to make sure it outputs the value as 0.1234
I've come up with the following, but I'm not sure that it's the simplest solution:
SQL> select to_char(1235.234,'fm9999999990.9999999999') from dual;
TO_CHAR(1235.234,'FM99
1235.234
SQL> select to_char(4.2333, 'fm9999999990.9999999999') from dual;
TO_CHAR(4.2333,'FM9999
4.2333
SQL> select to_char(.3992, 'fm9999999990.9999999999') from dual;
TO_CHAR(.3992,'FM99999
0.3992It seems to work, but seems a bit OTT to me - like I'm using a big JCB digger truck to dig a hole so I can plant a tulip bulb.
Are there any better solutions out there?

Answer 1

Actually, I've just kicked off the PL/SQL procedure that produces the report (as a text file, via utl_file) from my machine, and the output is the same - 0.1234 is output as .1234.
Hmm, and:
SQL> select 0.1234 from dual;
    0.1234
     .1234Question is, is there a simpler/more elegant way of getting the missing 0 displayed than what I've already come up with? (I don't like it much because it assumes that there won't be more than the specified number of digits before and after the decimal point. It's unlikely that there would be, but even so...)