PLSQL | LPAD Function

The PLSQL LPAD function is used for padding the left-side of a string with a specific set of characters. a prerequisite for this is that string shouldn’t be NULL. The LPAD function in PLSQL is useful for formatting the output of a query. The LPAD function accepts three parameters which are input_string, padded_length and the pad_string.

Both input_string and pad_string can be any of the datatypes CHAR, VARCHAR2, NCHAR, NVARCHAR2, CLOB, or NCLOB. The string returned is of VARCHAR2 datatype if input_string is a character datatype. The argument padded_length must be a NUMBER integer or a value that can be implicitly converted to a NUMBER integer. If you do not specify pad_string, then the default is a single blank. If input_string is longer than padded_length, then this function returns the portion of input_string that fits in padded_length.

Syntax:

LPAD( input_string, padded_length, pad_string )

Parameters Used:

input_string – It is used to specify the string which needs to be formatted.

padded_length – It is used to specify the number of characters to return. If the padded_length is smaller than the original string, the LPAD function will truncate the string to the size of padded_length.

pad_string – It is an optional parameter which is used to specify the input_string that will be padded to the left-hand side of string. If this parameter is omitted, the LPAD function will pad spaces to the left-side of string1.

Supported Versions of Oracle/PLSQL:

1. Oracle 12c
2. Oracle 11g
3. Oracle 10g
4. Oracle 9i
5. Oracle 8i

Example-1:

DECLARE 
   Test_String string(20) := 'Geeksforgeeks';
   
BEGIN 
   dbms_output.put_line(LPAD(Test_String, '5')); 
   
END; 

Output:

Geeks 

Example-2:

DECLARE 
   Test_String string(20) := 'Geeksforgeeks';
   
BEGIN 
   dbms_output.put_line(LPAD(Test_String, '17')); 
   
END; 

Output:

Geeksforgeeks 

Example-3:

DECLARE 
   Test_String string(20) := 'Geeksforgeeks';
   
BEGIN 
   dbms_output.put_line(LPAD(Test_String, '17', '0')); 
   
END;  

Output:

0000Geeksforgeeks 

Example-4:

DECLARE 
   Test_String string(20) := 'Geeksforgeeks';
   
   
BEGIN 
   dbms_output.put_line(LPAD(Test_String, '12', '0')); 
   
END;   

Output:

Geeksforgeeks