LPAD – Left Pad in oracle

This explains how to pad the specified number of character(s) on the left side of the string to return specified character length string in oracle

Oracle has a function by the name, LPAD which is used to pad the left side of the string with the specific set of characters.

Syntax: LPAD(str, len, [str_pad])

Here str is the original string, len is the number of characters to return, and str_pad is optional parameter which is padded with if specified.

Ex1: LAPD('egg', 10)
This returns ‘       egg’ as the result.

Ex2: LPAD('egg', 2)
This returns ‘eg’ as the result

Ex3: LPAD('egg', 5, '1')
This returns ‘11egg’ as the result

Note: If the len is smaller than the str, this truncates the string to the specified length and removes extra characters from the str on the right hand side (Ex2).