Strange workings of Oracle

Hi everyone,

I noticed something very strange when i tried to cache a table.

1. I cached a table alter table emp cache;
2. Did a describe on dba_tables One of the columns is : CACHE VARCHAR2(5)
3. SQL> select distinct cache from dba_tables ;

CACHE

    N
    Y
4)SQL> select table_name,cache from dba_tables where cache='Y' ;

no rows selected

5)select table_name,cache from dba_tables where cache like '%Y%';

TABLE_NAME                     CACHE


------------------------------ -----

EMP                                Y

6) SQL> select table_name,cache from
 dba_tables where cache=' Y';

TABLE_NAME                     CACHE


------------------------------ -----

EMP                                Y

Gave 4 spaces before y

If the column is varchar2 shouldn't it put only Y rather than prefixing it with spaces.

Even for Datatype char , space are postfixed .

I found this on Oracle 7.3.4 and Oracle 8.1.5

                                   Thanks