I have a field, MDTIME, that shows raw values as such...
124306
75534
100508
2502
134015

etc.. but when I use LENGTH(MDTIME) I get 6 for every row.

This made me think the values were acutally as such...
124306
075534
100508
002502
134015

with leading zeros somehow not showing, but actually there in the tables.

so then I did SUBSTR(MDTIME,1,2) and not once did I get a 0 (zero) as a first character. IS there something wrong with LENGTH? Is it telling me the LENGTH of the field or the string in it? I want the LENGTH of the string in it if that's possible. thanks for any help you can offer.

if the filed is char and must be because substr is being used, all characters are displayed in select try
select mdtime,length(mdime),hex(mdtime) from ..
because this is char(6) the length is always 6
where do you display data in command line or other application. eg excel would remove leading zeroes

That is because you have defined the field as CHAR(6). To get variable field length you'll have to define your column as VARCHAR(6) instead.

Thanks for the help! You were right about the field type being CHAR instead of VARCHAR. I ended up using SUBSTR(DIGITS(MDTIME),1,4) to get the time from that field (I don't need the seconds, that's why it's 1,4 instead of 1,6)

Hi,
if using time data why don't you use time data type?
Regards