Erm, yeah, that's supposed to be '$id = 666;'.

try storing in a varchar2 firld, if you use CHAR oracle will trim traing spaces.

It seems, that I have the same problem using PHP 4.3.0 on Apache 1.3.22 with Oracle 8.1.7:

When I use a OciBindByName, the string is trimed at the end. This small program uses the DUAL from Oracle just to return the input: 

  $conn = OciLogon ("x","y","z");
  $val = " X X ";  // last letter is a " " (blank)

  // direct way without a bind variable
  $stm1 = OciParse($conn, "select '".$val."' from dual");
  OciExecute($stm1);
  OciFetch($stm1);
  echo "<b>", OciResult($stm1, 1), "</b><br>\n";

  // now using a bind variable:
  $stm2 = OciParse($conn, "select :input from dual");
  OciBindByName($stm2, ":input", &$val, 10);
  OciExecute($stm2);
  OciFetch($stm2);
  echo "<b>", OciResult($stm2, 1), "</b><br>\n";

  OciLogoff($conn);


The output is:

  <b> X X </b><br>
  <b> X X</b><br>

But I want to get the same output for the direct way and when I use a bind variable. 

Thank you for any idea how to get the string with tailing spaces right into Oracle using a bind variable.

Best wishes,
Jens

There still doesn't seem to be a satisfactory explanation posted here, and it's still Open, so could someone please address the salient issue:

If the database column is defined as VARCHAR2, why does this strip trailing blanks on the inserted value:

$text = "  this line has spaces   ";
$st = ociparse($db, "insert into test values (:text)");
ocibindbyname($st, ":text", &$text, 2000);
ociexecute($st);

whilst this does not:

$text = "  this line has spaces   ";
$st = ociparse($db, "insert into test values '$text')");
ociexecute($st);

My mistake -- it's Closed, not Open ("green means Closed, green means Closed!"), but, to my mind, still without satisfactory explanation.

Cheers!

I also wonder why this is closed.
Just encountered a simpler case:

I cannot select using this field:

    LOCATION  NOT NULL VARCHAR2(2)

those records which have '  ' (two spaces) for
that LOCATION's value. Non-space values work fine.
Interactive SQLPLUS confirms those rows do exist.

Oracle 8
PHP 4.3.1
Solaris SunOS dmc 5.7 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-Enterprise

Guys, I realize the explanation for the closure wasn't very good, but it is correct.  For some reason the underlying Oracle OCI call strips trailing spaces on a bind but not on a regular insert/update on a varchar2 field.  You would have to ask Oracle to explain why.

Read the VARCHAR2 section of this URL:
http://sales.esicom.com/sales/oracle/appdev.816/a76975/oci03typ.htm

Thanks, Rasmus -- very informative reference.

I see that if you specify your bind variable as external datatype SQLT_CHR, trailing spaces are indeed stripped, so this is presumably what PHP is using at the moment.  However, there are other SQLT_ types where this stripping is not performed, and I wonder if there is any chance that one of these could be used instead.  In particular, the external datatype SQLT_STR utilizes a C-style null-terminated string -- I don't know enough about PHP internals to know if this would be easy to manage or not, or if there would be a bad performance hit, but as we seem to have a fairly active OCI maintenance team at the moment, perhaps someone could look into it?

Cheers!

Mike

I'll look into it, but it's not a PHP problem indeed.
That's how OCI works. 
Just don't bind text variables if you don't want to strip trailing spaces.