Right Align text in SQL Server

Question

We all know T-SQL's string manipulation capabilities sometimes leaves much to be desired...

I have a numeric field that needs to be output in T-SQL as a right-aligned text column. Example:

Value
----------
   143.55
  3532.13
     1.75

How would you go about that? A good solution ought to be clear and compact, but remember there is such a thing as "too clever".

I agree this is the wrong place to do this, but sometimes we're stuck by forces outside our control.

Thank you.

Answer 1

The STR function has an optional length argument as well as a number-of-decimals one.

SELECT STR(123.45, 6, 1)

------
 123.5

(1 row(s) affected)

Answer 2

If you MUST do this in SQL you can use the folowing code (This code assumes that you have no numerics that are bigger than 40 chars):

SELECT REPLICATE(' ', 40 - LEN(CAST(numColumn as varchar(40)))) + 
CAST(numColumn AS varchar(40)) FROM YourTable

Answer 3

The easiest way is to pad left:

CREATE FUNCTION PadLeft(@PadString nvarchar(100), @PadLength int)
RETURNS nvarchar(200)
AS
begin
return  replicate(' ',@padlength-len(@PadString)) + @PadString
end
go
print dbo.PadLeft('123.456', 20)
print dbo.PadLeft('1.23', 20)