Generic Function for Padding a Character in SQL Server

Padding character to a string is something which we use quite often in our day to day development activities and is what i found as a very good generic way of doing this -

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.fn_PadValue
(
  @InValue varchar(50),
  @PadLimit int,
  @PadChar char(1),
  @PadSide char(1)
)
RETURNS varchar(50)
AS
BEGIN
  Declare @Result varchar(50)
  Declare @Padding int
  --Determine the amount of padding
  Set @Padding = @PadLimit - Len(@InValue)
  IF @Padding < 0
    Set @Padding = 0

  IF @PadSide = 'L' -- Pad the left side
    Set @Result = Replicate(@PadChar, @Padding) + @InValue

  IF @PadSide = 'R' -- Pad the right side
    Set @Result = @InValue + Replicate(@PadChar, @Padding)

  RETURN (@Result)
END

The Above code can be used in both LEFT and RIGHT side padding just by passing appropriate parameter to the function.

Usage --

select dbo.fn_PadValue('171',6,'0','L')         --For Left Side Padding
select dbo.fn_PadValue('171',6,'0','R')         --For Right Side Padding


References -
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/scripts/T-SQL/64358/

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