Question

I’m using MS SQL, and my query is like this:

select
A.CUS_EuroCustId No_Id, 
' '  BLANK1,
A.IVC_Number INV_Nr , 
'     ' BLANK2, 
'PINV' PINV ,  
' ' BLANK3,

from 
INVOICE as A

Then the output is like this:

  01102450 146918     PINV 
  01102847 146381     PINV 
  01105915 16151     PINV 
  01102646 146850     PINV
  01105915 16150     PINV 

The IVC_Number has two format, 6 digits and 5 digits and the space between IVC_Number and ‘PINV’ is important. Now how can I make it in my SQL query and the output should be like this:

  01102450 146918     PINV 
  01102847 146381     PINV 
  01105915 16151      PINV 
  01102646 146850     PINV
  01105915 16150      PINV 

Thanks.

Answer 1

Use LEFT and add some padding yourself:

LEFT(A.IVC_Number+'    ',6) INV_Nr , 

And it will always be 6 characters wide.

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Although, of course, in the current query, each column should be being displayed separately anyway – something is combining all of the columns together into a single piece of text, and I’d usually recommend pushing string formatting out to whatever that component is, rather than working in SQL.