Peter... try SUBSTRING with a variable for length or RTRIM in the text mode on a wide column to see what the OP means... displayed column comes out too wide...

Perfect... thanks for the feedback, Scott.

Nah... that wasn't it... set mine to 40 and still worked on Authors table...

Sorry for the bum info

I believe you need an additional batch command...

mode con[:] [cols=c] [lines=n]

Oh... it works... it's just the text mode display has a mind of it's own when it comes to calculated column widths... so you need to do something like this......

The problem with the UNC is that the server must be logged in as a "super domain user" than can "see" those other boxes and directories...

JohnG,

What was in the array?  Might help me understand why people would need to pass such a structure to a proc or function... thanks.

Heh... in my case, it's multiple ex-wifes

Nice job, Zach... didn't realize that starting over was an option but I do thank you for the explanation of what you did

Nope... and I feel for ya... you're not the first person I've seen get thrown into these types of duties with no experience... But, heh

Another proverb:

"Before you can think outside the box, you must first realize... that you're in a box."  --Jeff Moden circa 2004

The only tool I use is the large Calcium knob that sits upon my shoulders   Most good-to-excellent Developers and DBA's are able to...

Correct... not portable in most cases... certainly not portable to Oracle.  But I'm not one of those that will forsake the use of a good tool just for some chance...

My first step would be to talk to the vendor providing the data and get them to provide the proper format of having the same number of semicolons on every...

I guess I'd have to say, like anything else, "It depends"

Had one recruiter try to push me into an Oracle job I didn't...