If you were to log in, you'd be able to get more information on your fellow community member.
You say: "Oops. Oracle pads some of these fields by default so that reports will be lined up and neat. We'll have to trim the strings ourselves." Not quite: one can use FM modifier in format string to instruct Oracle to trim whitespace from resulting string automatically, like this:SQL> select to_char(sysdate,'Day, Month DD, YYYY') from dual; TO_CHAR(SYSDATE,'DAY,MONTHDD, ----------------------------- Monday , May 22, 2006 SQL> select to_char(sysdate,'FMDay, Month DD, YYYY') from dual; TO_CHAR(SYSDATE,'FMDAY,MONTHD ----------------------------- Monday, May 22, 2006Note that FM is a switch - second FM in format string negates the effect of the first.