AW: Oracle-compatible lpad/rpad behavior

> >> Perhaps they *should* truncate if the specified length is less than
> >> the original string length. Does Oracle do that?
>
> > Yes, it truncates, same as Informix.
>
> I went to fix this and then realized I still don't have an adequate spec
> of how Oracle defines these functions. It would seem logical, for
> example, that lpad might truncate on the left instead of the right,
> ie lpad('abcd', 3, 'whatever') might yield 'bcd' not 'abc'. Would
> someone check?

returns 'abc' on Oracle and Informix.

>
> Also, what happens if the specified length is less than zero? Error,
> or is it treated as zero?

Returns NULL in both if length <= 0. I would see the < 0 case as proper,
but the == 0 case sure looks weird to me.

Very good catch, Tom !! :-)
Andreas