Best way to bind to char[x] datatypes

[Nobody/Anonymous]

Using Oracle, we are doing some simple selects from a table that has CHAR[x] fields.  We are using null-terminated char* strings and have run into some snags reconciling differences in padding between the two datatypes.

As an example, say we have a field SOME_FIELD in SOME_TABLE defined to be CHAR[3].  Given the following statement:

SELECT * FROM SOME_TB
WHERE SOME_FIELD=:var<char[4]>

Even saying one value of SOME_FIELD is "AB ", sending an unpadded "AB" will match no fields in the database.  Since OCI can handle the difference without padding, I'm confident that the OTL can also.  I just dont know how.  What is the cleanest way other users have found to deal with this problem? 

[Sergei Kuchin]

This will do the trick:

SELECT * FROM SOME_TB
WHERE SOME_FIELD=
   RPAD(:var<char[4]>,
              VSIZE(SOME_FIELD),
               '  ')

OTL should have had a "padded char[xxx]" type, say, charz[XXX], but it doesn't in reality, because of low demand. Also, it's more difficult to implement  the "fixed size string" semantic in C++ itself, since all string comparisons are "variable-length" based.

[Nobody/Anonymous]

Thanks Sergei, this will do just fine!

[Wojtek123]

Hi,
I have the same problem with fixed-length field CHAR[x] used in WHERE clause. Unfortunately I cannot modify SQL statement. Would it be possible to fix this in OTL? You mentioned that there is a problem with implementing this. What kind of problem is it? Maybe I could fix it if you would give me some hint how to do this?