How to always show two decimal places on a number in PL/SQL - sql

Question

Folks,
I have a existing stored procedure that I'm trying to update to always show two decimal places even when it's a whole number or single decimal number.
This stored procedure builds out a message that has to show v_credit_amt as a two decimal number, yet the value assigned to v_credit_amt can be either a whole number or single decimal or a two decimal value
i.e. 175 should display as 175.00, 250.5 should display as 250.50, 395.95 should display as 395.95.
Here is the relevant stock pl/sql
v_credit_amt number(22,2);
select NVL(sit_credit_limit,0)
into v_credit_amt
from sites
where sit_pkey = p_site_id;
I thought that formatting via to_char during the select would solve this, ala
select NVL(to_char(sit_credit_limit, 'fm99999.00'),0)
into v_credit_amt
from sites
where sit_pkey = p_site_id;
--v_credit_amt := to_char(v_credit_amt, 'fm99999.00');
insert into SQL_TXT values (v_credit_amt);
commit;
As you can see from the commented out line above, I've also tried it once the v_credit_amt variable is defined
I've also tried it with the to_number function
select NVL(to_number(sit_credit_limit, '99999.00'),0)
into v_credit_amt
from sites
where sit_pkey = p_site_id;
However if the value stored in the sit_credit_limit column is a whole number without decimals, or a number like 250.5 v_credit_amt shows the same in all cases when querying SQL_TXT table I'm inserting to for debugging.
SQL> select * from SQL_TXT;
COL1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
175
250.5
This particular event simply concatenates multiple message portions into a single long message string that is returned i.e.
if p_message_id = '14' then
v_message := 'Comtrol Check In Message Posted';
v_string := v_string || '008' || lpad(length(v_fname || ' ' || v_lname), 3, '0') || v_fname || ' ' || v_lname;
v_string := v_string || '059' || lpad(1, 3, '0') || '0';
--v_string := v_string || '089' || lpad(1, 3, v_credit_amt) || to_char(v_credit_amt);
v_string := v_string || '089' || lpad(length(to_char(v_credit_amt, 'fm9999999.00')), 3, '0') || to_char(v_credit_amt, 'fm9999999.00');
v_string := v_string || '106' || lpad(length(nvl(v_acct_number,'')), 3, '0') || v_acct_number;
--v_string := v_string || '106' || v_acct_number;
v_string := v_string || '164' || lpad(1, 3, '0') || '0';
v_string := v_string || '174' || lpad(length(v_rm_phone_num), 3, '0') || v_rm_phone_num;
v_string := v_string || '175' || lpad(length(v_rm_id), 3, '0') || v_rm_id;
v_string := v_string || '183' || lpad(1, 3, '0') || '0';
endif;
However I cannot get the final string to properly have two decimals in all use cases.
For example if the value in the db is 125 I get this for a final string
144450034629999008009Bob Smith05900100{89006125}1060073307542164001017400340917500
34091830010
however it should have been
144450034629999008009Bob Smith05900100{89007125.00}1060073307542164001017400340917500
34091830010
Sorry for the formatting above, I can't see how to bold a section without a code block so I've highlighted the relative portions instead {}
What am I missing if I need to always display a number to two decimals even if a whole or 1 decimal value is given?

Answer 1

You actually, have to insert the data with formatting. (Assuming the targeted column is VARCHAR) What ever format you fetch and put into a NUMBER variable, will be a NUMBER.
A number doesn't have a format to be saved after-all. Only for display, the formatting comes into picture.
insert into SQL_TXT values (TO_CHAR(v_credit_amt,'FM99999.00'));
commit;
If the INSERT-ed column is NUMBER again.
You still want to go with
SELECT TO_CHAR(COL1,'FM99999.00') FROM SQL_TEXT;