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Document ID:	782
Subject:	Padding leading zeros to an integer
Creation date:	7/29/09 3:27 PM
Last modified on:	7/29/09 3:28 PM

Details

Assume that you an integer in your database that you want to pad with leading zeros to make it a fixed length column.

The table design is as follows.

create table Sample(id integer)

There are 4 rows in this table containing following values:
8
80
800
8000

Our goal is to write a query that will display the following results.
0008
0080
0800
8000

Following query will produce the results you like. This sample is according to the syntax understood by Microsoft SQL Server. Modify the functions appropriately if you are using any other database.

select CASE LEN(CAST(id as VARCHAR(5)))
    WHEN 0 THEN '0000'
    WHEN 1 THEN '000' + CAST(id as VARCHAR(5))
    WHEN 2 THEN '00' + CAST(id as VARCHAR(5))
    WHEN 3 THEN '0' + CAST(id as VARCHAR(5))
    else CAST(id as VARCHAR(5))
    END
From Sample

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