How to right-align a column when selecting data?

Question

A school assignment I'm working on says to format a decimal(14,0) column "as currency [US$xxx,xxx] and right justified [all the commas line up vertically]."

I can select the data in the correct format using this:

CONCAT("US$", FORMAT(theColumn, 0))

But the data is not right justified. I've been searching and searching and simply haven't been able to find any way to right justify the output.

I did find an answer on here that shows how to do it if the column is a string type and has a fixed width, but I can't find a way to right justify the output for a decimal data type. Is it possible?

EDIT:

MySQL returns data left justified, like this:

US$18,100,000,000
US$130,100,000,000
US$1,200,000,000

I want to select it right justified, like this:

 US$18,100,000,000
US$130,100,000,000
  US$1,200,000,000

Answer 1

I think you want

select lpad(column_name,x,' ') from table_name;

where x is the number of places you want that value you fill (so say 8 places)

Answer 2

I would have done:

LPAD(CONCAT("US$", FORMAT(theColumn, 0)),20,' ')

What this does is present the output in a column of 20 characters, padding ' ' to the left of values.

Answer 3

Another way is:

RIGHT(CONCAT("              US$", theColumn), 17)

Basically, prefix your_field with enough spaces to fill your display column, then take the right most characters from that. So if your display column is 17 characters, prefix your_field with (at least) 17 spaces/"US$" then take the right most 17 characters of that string. 17 is the 14,0 plus the 3 characters in "US$".

Nope, I don't like it either, especially in this day and age, but it does work. I suppose DB engines don't have something sophisticated to do this is the philosophy that the DB is the "Model" and not the "View".

Answer 4

Use CONCAT with div right align. Example:

CONCAT("<div style='text-align:right',(FORMAT(theColumn, 0))

This is working with MySQL.