Left justification output

• woye1

  SSC Enthusiast

  Points: 114

  More actions

  January 19, 2015 at 11:01 am

  #148635

  Could I get some expert help on how to make the output of this query left justified. Its a 10 character length output but its starting 5 spaces from the true starting point.

  REPLICATE(' ',10-LEN(

  ISNULL(

  CASE WHEN LTRIM(REPLACE(A.DIAGN1, '.','')) =''

  THEN NULL

  ELSE LTRIM(REPLACE(A.DIAGN1, '.',''))

  END

  , 'V689')

  ))+ISNULL(

  CASE WHEN LTRIM(REPLACE(A.DIAGN1, '.','')) =''

  THEN NULL

  ELSE LTRIM(REPLACE(A.DIAGN1, '.',''))

  END

  , 'V689') AS PRIME_DIAGN_CODE, --ISNULL(LEFT(' '+REPLACE(A.DIAGN1, '.',''), 10), LEFT(''+'V689'

  Thanks in advance...

• kaj

  SSCommitted

  Points: 1616

  More actions

  January 23, 2015 at 10:26 am

  #1772741

  What you have is code that will add the necessary leading spaces up to 10. In effect it will leave you with a right-aligned 10 character field.

  It is unnecessarily complicated, IMHO, but that's what it does.

  If you want the field to be left-aligned, then simply delete the first half (up to and including the plus-sign). The first half is what adds the spaces to right-align up to a field-lenght of 10.