As Michael said, with what you have provided it's difficult to offer a solution, but how about instead of using TRIM you use either RTRIM and/or LTRIM to trim specific characters which includes the TAB character? Steve On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 6:26 AM, Michael Moore <michaeljmoore@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Since you are not showing the entire program it's hard to say what the > problem is. > However, this might help you to figure it out: The point is, you can use > DUMP to examine your string more carefully. > DECLARE > vsize_fieldin VARCHAR2( 120 ) := 'TECH' > || CHR( 09 ); > vsize_field VARCHAR2( 120 ); > BEGIN > SELECT DUMP( vsize_fieldin, 16 ) > INTO vsize_field > FROM DUAL; > DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line( TO_CHAR( vsize_field )); > END; > -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l