Output of value returned from function in SELECT statement ??

Question

Hi
I have created the below function
create or replace
FUNCTION jc_test
RETURN VARCHAR2
IS myrec VARCHAR2(270);
BEGIN
SELECT RPAD('*',270,'*')
INTO myrec
FROM DUAL ;
RETURN myrec;
END ;
and I executed the SELECT statement in Oracle SQL developer as a script
select
LENGTH(jc_test()) len
*,jc_test() rec*
from dual ;
I get exact output as below
LEN REC
270 ******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
So here LEN is correctly shown as 270 characters but when I see the astrisk's (also appended with spaces ) its total length is 4000 characters
Can anyone give their thoughts on this.
Its fine if I run as normal, i mean not as a script.
Regards
jc
Edited by: JC on Jun 16, 2011 11:25 AM

Answer 1

Hi,
So here LEN is correctly shown as 270 charactersYes, correct
but when I see the astrisk's (also appended with spaces ) its total length is 4000 charactersNo buts. It is not padded. That is just how it is displayed by your tool. In SQL*Plus this is controlled by LINESIZE and COLUMN
SQL> create or replace function dummy return varchar2 as begin return null; end;
  2  /
Function created.
SQL> select dummy from dual;
D
X
SQL> select dummy() from dual;
DUMMY()
SQL> col "dummy()" for a10
SQL> select dummy() from dual;
DUMMY()
SQL>P.S: It is a really bad idea to create your own wrapper functions, built-in functions. Hopefully you are not really doing that?
Regards
Peter