Hello Group Members,
Highlight Spaces under View and Display in the IDEA menu toolbar is used to display all leading and trailing spaces as blocks in a given field.
Certain features in IDEA, such as the @Function ~ @Match, perform an exact match on the contents of a field, including both leading and trailing spaces.
So to understand this with an example - if you perform a Direct Extraction with the criteria @Match(TRANCODE, "PO", "JV", "PYMT", "RCPT") then the extraction will look for exact matches - PO, JV, PYMT and RCPT without any leading or trailing spaces.
Any cell in the field TRANCODE containing space and JV or PYMT space will get left out.
While viewing a database (eye-balling the active database in IDEA), it is not always obvious whether there are leading and/or trailing spaces for Character fields.
In such a situation it is recommended to use Highlight Spaces as the blocks serve as reminders to consider whether you should use @Match in conjunction with @Trim or @Strip before undertaking the match and compare.
Best Regards
Group Admin Team