Oracle / SQL Plus and Format

[saw15]

I am trying writing a text file and selecting one field that is defined as number(4,0) in the Oracle DB. I am formatting the column: column format a5 and then selecting the column in the select statement. Linesize was set to 220 for the other 21 fields and bells (20) and cr/lf (2) for a total of 242.

Problem is that this new column contains null values, and for somereason, has a min value of 39 characters in it. Linesize has to be adjusted to 261 to write to a file without truncating.

Any help or assistance is much appreciated.

 

[carp]

Since you're pulling up a number, you might try formatting the column as a number:

COL my_number_column FORMAT 99999