Character display format examples
The following table shows examples of the different character display formats.
| Format options | Data | Display | 
| xxxxxxxx | These are characters | These ar | 
| x(9) | These are characters | These are | 
| x(20) | These are characters | These are characters | 
| xxx | These are characters | The | 
| AAA-9999 | abc1234 | abc-1234 | 
| (999) 999-9999 | 6172754500 | (617) 275-4500 | 
| !! | ma | MA | 
Trailing spaces are truncated in character fields. If a character field contains only one space, the space is truncated to a null value. You can use the TRIM function to truncate leading and trailing spaces.