In the world according to Oracle, a zero-length string is indistinguishable from a NULL. Yes, I'm that's incompatible w/ ANSI, but that's what Oracle does. It's well documented behavior, and it's not likely to change anytime soon. -Mark -----Original Message----- From: John Flack [mailto:JohnF@xxxxxxxx] Sent: Friday, March 19, 2004 11:00 AM To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: RE: Create view using CAST to change datatype That's interesting, because I thought that Oracle had changed things so that LTRIM(' ') would result in a string with a length of zero, which is not the same thing as a NULL. Guess I was wrong - but I wouldn't depend on my being wrong forever because the ANSI standard says zero length <> null. -----Original Message----- From: Mercadante, Thomas F [mailto:thomas.mercadante@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Friday, March 19, 2004 10:10 AM To: 'oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx' Subject: RE: Create view using CAST to change datatype Saira, This worked: CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW tomview AS SELECT col1, col2, cast(NVL(RTRIM(col1),0) AS NUMBER) col1_numb FROM tomtest Values for the TOMTEST table were (' ',1); SELECT * FROM tomview returns values of (' ', 1, 0) And I agree wih Igor - why are you using CAST rather than to_number? Tom Mercadante Oracle Certified Professional ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at //www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at //www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html ----------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at //www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at //www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html -----------------------------------------------------------------