Newsgroups: comp.databases
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!cbnewsl!cbnewsk!barton
From: barton@cbnewsk.att.com (jim.m.barton)
Subject: Re: Informix question, character columns
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 90 23:05:31 GMT
Message-ID: <1990Nov28.230531.11939@cbnewsk.att.com>
Summary: use "string" psuedo-datatype
References: <1990Nov28.110715.22247@lth.se>
Lines: 42

In article <1990Nov28.110715.22247@lth.se>, newsuser@efd.lth.se (News server connection) writes:
> 
> Is it possible to have null-terminated character strings
> in a character column? The ESQL/C manual mention that it is possible.
> But my strings gets filled with spaces up to the length of the column.
> 
> Is there a way to do this?

Yes.

INFORMIX ESQL/C supports a psuedo datatype, "string", to be used for host
variables for this sitution. Host variables declared as "string" are
generated as a normal "char" variables in the C code
but signal to the DBMS to suppress trailing blanks AND terminate with an
end-of-string when making assignments to those host variables.

Example,

Suppose we have a table:

create table  name_table
(	
	name	char(100)
);

insert into name_table(name) values("SMITH             ");
	
The following code should retrieve name_table.name using a "string"
host variable:


$	string name_value[101]; /* Note added byte for end-of-string */

$	select name
        into :name_value
        from name_table;

	printf("name is '%s'\n", name_value);

The result should be:

name is 'SMITH'