Oracle RPAD() Function

The Oracle (PL/SQL) RPAD() function returns a string that is right-padded with a specified string to a certain length. If the string is longer than length, this function will remove characters from the string to shorten it to the length characters.

Syntax

RPAD(string, length, pad_string)

Parameters

Return Value

Returns a string that is right-padded with a specified string to a certain length.

Example 1:

The example below shows the usage of RPAD() function.

RPAD('alphacodingskills', 21)
Result: 'alphacodingskills    '

RPAD('alphacodingskills', 21, ' ')
Result: 'alphacodingskills    '

RPAD('alphacodingskills', 21, '*')
Result: 'alphacodingskills****'

RPAD('alphacodingskills', 21, 'XYZ')
Result: 'alphacodingskillsXYZX'

RPAD('abc', 8, 'XYZ')
Result: 'abcXYZXY'

RPAD('alphacodingskills', 11, 'XYZ')
Result: 'alphacoding'

Example 2:

Consider a database table called Employee with the following records:

The below mentioned query is used to right-pad the records of EmpID column of the Employee table:

SELECT Employee.*, 
RPAD(EmpID, 4, 'FIN') AS NewEmpID 
FROM Employee;

This will produce the following result: