SQLPlus converts to tabs only when run via script

From: "Rich Jesse" <rjoralist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Oracle L" <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:09:59 -0500 (CDT)

Hey all,

In 10.1.0.5.0 on AIX, we ran across an issue that ended up showing us that
SQLPlus was converting spaces to tabs, which was causing an occasional issue
in our auditable SQLPlus spooled output.

No biggie, as I'll handily add a TAB OFF to the existing SET command in the
SQLPlus script, right?  But I thought I should verify the problem first, so
I ran this interactively from SQLPlus:

whenever sqlerror exit rollback
spool ./ti.txt
set pagesize 100 linesize 160 trimspool on
connect / as sysdba
set echo on
show all
select '        test' from dual;
select '        test        ' from dual;
rollback;
exit;

Note there are exactly 8 spaces before the first "test" and 8 before and
after the second.  However, the ti.txt file has NO tabs in it, despite the
output from the "show all" command saying "tab ON".

When the procedure is run in production, it's via script, so I pasted the
above script into a file called "t.sql" and ran it:

sqlplus /nolog @t

Lo and behold, the spool file has tabs!  However, the only tabs are before
the word "test" and only in the echoed SELECT statement.  It did not replace
the spaces after the word "test" nor in the output from the SELECT.  And
like before, the "show all" output is identical -- "tab ON".

I have a login.sql in $HOME that sets linesize and pagesize, and the default
glogin.sql in ?/sqlplus/admin, which has COLUMN statements and sets
sqlprompt, linesize, and pagesize -- no tab settings in either.  SQLPATH is
not set.

The only difference is that the one run from a script has tabs and the other
pasted into SQLPlus doesn't.

Adding "tab OFF" to $HOME/login.sql works, but I don't think I've seen this
behavior before.  Sound familiar to anyone?

Rich

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SQLPlus converts to tabs only when run via script

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