>Actually, it seems to work fine without the padding. I would have thought that would not work, but it does.
>
>Well, at least I can say it does work when there is at least one non-null in the testdata group. I should test for all nulls in testdata, and maybe then it would fail.
>

The width of the field is determined by the first matching record. If the first matching record is a .NULL. value then your field will be set to the width of '' as defined in your: NVL(somefield,'')


This is a gotcha that has gotten me.