LTRIM taking too many characters...??

Question

Hi guys,
I have a list of subnames, all beginning with 'pro_type_'
I have used LTRIM to get rid of this and just print the rest of the name, but for some reason all the subnames beginning with the letter 'e' also lose that letter - can anyone explain to me why?
E.g. both
SELECT DISTINCT LTRIM(subname, 'pro_type') from vwclustertplname
and
SELECT DISTINCT LTRIM(subname, 'pro_type_') from vwclustertplname
gives me the list, but with that problem...
I have also tried trimming after getting the list, e.g.
FOR c IN (SELECT DISTINCT subname from vwclustertplname)
          LOOP
               htp.formSelectOption( LTRIM(c.subname, lv_trimString), cattributes => 'value="' || LTRIM(c.subname, lv_trimString) || '"');
          END LOOP;
where lv_trimString := 'pro_type_'
and
htp.formSelectOption( LTRIM(c.subname, 'pro_type_'), cattributes => 'value="' || LTRIM(c.subname, 'pro_type_') || '"');
All the other subnames display correctly, but the ones starting with 'e' come out with no 'e'
Any idea?? I'm confused!!!!
Thanks
angel

Answer 1

try REPLACE becuase what you are telling about LTRIM is the expected behaviour. till it finds match it keeps trimming and stops when there is mismatch.
so you can check if REPLACE is solving the problem.
replace(subname, lv_trimstring)