formatting output with SQL*Plus

Hello,

I'm hitting the old problem that I need to spool data into a text file, but SQL*Plus insists on padding the fields to the length of the column definition.

The problem is that I cannot concatenate the columns as I get an "ORA-01489: result of string concatenation is too long" when doing so.

What I want is a file that has the following format

value1|value2|value3

but what I get is:

value1 |value2 |value3

The columns are all VARCHAR2(2000)

What I'm basically doing is:

set term off
set echo off
set feedback off
set heading off
set define off
set timing off
set linesize 32767
set pagesize 0
set colsep '|'
set newpage none
set trimspool on

spool output.txt

SELECT column1,column2, column3
FROM my_table;

spool off

Is there any way to remove the trailing spaces in the column values?

I'm using Oracle 8.1.7.4.0 on HP/UX

Any input is greatly appreciated!!

Cheers
Thomas Received on Wed Dec 08 2004 - 11:08:49 CST