Space issue in Extract File

Hi,

PFA code snippet :-
Cursor cur_1 Is
Select lb.*
From tab1 lb;


begin
................
For i in cur_1 LOOP

utl_file.putf(fp,'%s',LTRIM (To_Char(NVL(i.ID,0),'09999999999')));
utl_file.putf(fp,'%s',To_Char(NVL(i.rate,' '), 'S0999999V9999'));
utl_file.putf(fp,'%s',To_Char(NVL(i.amount,' '), 'S0999999V9999'));

end loop;

end;

In the output file , if the column value for rate is NULL then it is not adding spaces. As a result the output is not properly alligned.

Sample output

000464247078
5908540 <--- this is not uniform because NVL is replacing null with space.


cheers
subhotech
000000066400