SQLPlus formatting chaos

Hi

Oracle 8.0.5 / Linux SuSE 6.0

I am really not an expert concerning SQLPlus, but at least I took some time to read the docs concerning output formatting, but I can't figure out how to teach SQLPlus to do something very basic: just print out everything correctly aligned. Hopefully someone can explain how to do this.

Here is what I expect SQLPlus to do:

COLA COLB COLC

----------- ----------- -----------------
abcd        efghijkl    mnopqrstuvwxyz
1234                    567890

Here is what SQLPlus usually does here:

COLA COLB COLC

----------- ----------- ------------------
abcd        efghijkl  mnopqrstuvwxyz
1234              567890

If columns are empty (or very short), then the next columns simply get shifted to the left. The headers and data are inconsistent with the '-----' separator areas. Actually the '-----' area is the only thing which is correct when looking at the size of the database columns.

I tried all sorts of commands and parameters, such as the COLUMN command with the FORMAT and HEADING parameter, but whatever I do I still get the same chaos. SQLPLUS ignores my desired field widths except for the '-----' areas, which are updated correctly. If I use 'rpad' then I can achieve at least alignment of the actual row elements, but the headers are still completely misplaced. I even can't imagine where SQLPlus takes the difference between the header elements from.

Even an example in the Oracle docs show the same misalignment ( at least concerning the header fields).

Department Employee Salary Commission ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------

        30 ALLEN            1600        300
        30 WARD             1250        500
        30 MARTIN           1250       1400
        30 TURNER           1500          0

It would be very nice, if someone could tell me those magic commands to achieve usable formatting.

Thanks in advance.

bye
--
Sam Jordan Received on Mon Jan 10 2000 - 07:02:58 CST