Unequal length between strings after writing to a file - using same delimiter (tab) - oracle

Question

I have a short procedure in PL/SQL which uses UTL_FILE package to create and then write to a .txt file.
Tab is saved in its own variable (v_delimiter), declared as varchar2(5), with a value of chr(9).
The header is saved as a string, concatenated with the v_delimiter and then written to a file.
After that, the rest of the data from an explicit cursor is also written to a file, line by line.
In the end, when I open the txt file, there are unequal widths between some of the strings which make up a header. There are also unequal widths between some of the data from the cursor inside a final .txt file and I guess that shouldn't be since I am using one and the same delimiter (tab) to create a header and to create a string from a cursor.
I am using UTL_FILE.put_line_nchar function to write a Unicode line to a file.
I tried without declaring a delimiter as a variable, using literally chr(9) when concatenating and it is always the same result.
I am out of ideas why is this happening in the final txt file.
v_file_handle UTL_FILE.file_type ;
v_output_path VARCHAR2 (100) := '/Path/to/File' ;
v_file_header VARCHAR2 (32767) ;
v_delimiter VARCHAR2 (5) := chr(9) ;
v_file_handle := UTL_FILE.fopen_nchar (v_output_path,'string_1' || TO_CHAR (SYSDATE, 'dd_mm_yyyy') || '.txt','w', 32767); -- opening
v_file_header :='claimFileIdentifier'|| v_delimiter || 'claimFileOpenedDate'
|| v_delimiter|| 'claimStatus'|| v_delimiter|| 'claimStatusDate'|| v_delimiter|| 'incidentDateTime'|| v_delimiter|| 'incidentPlace'|| v_delimiter|| 'calculationType' ... -- header
UTL_FILE.put_line_nchar ( v_file_handle, v_file_header ) ; --writing header to a file
FOR rec IN cursor_candidates --iterating over a cursor
LOOP
UTL_FILE.put_line_nchar (
v_file_handle,
rec.claimFileIdentifier
|| v_delimiter
|| rec.claimFileOpenedDate
|| v_delimiter
|| rec.claimStatus
|| v_delimiter
|| rec.claimStatusDate
|| v_delimiter
|| rec.incidentDateTime
|| v_delimiter
|| rec.incidentPlace
|| v_delimiter ... ) ; -- writing cursor rows to a file
END LOOP ;
UTL_FILE.fclose ( v_file_handle );
Final txt file and unequal width between certain strings

Answer 1

That's kind of expected, in my opinion. Values are separated by the TAB character, but it doesn't mean that output will look "nice" when you look at it as a text file.
For example, following values are separated by TAB, but they look ugly:
a b c
Littlefoot Scott Tiger
If you e.g. imported that file into Excel and set TAB as column separator, every value would be in its own column and output would look pretty.
If you wanted text file to look nice as well, you'll have to use a different approach, e.g. LPAD numeric values (IDs, salaries, ...), RPAD textual strings (names, addresses, ...), possibly SUBSTR (to cut long values short).

Answer 2

This relating to the functionality of the client application that you use to open the output tab-separated values (TSV) file.
If I have the data:
longtitle longtitle2 longtitle3
a b c
1234567890 123456789010234545 1234567788
and I open it in a basic text editor (such as Notepad) then the output is:
And the columns are unequal across the rows.
However, if I display the same data in an editor that supports TSV files (such as Notepad++) then it displays the same output with equal widths for the columns across the rows:
Importing the data into a spreadsheet application (such as Excel or OpenOffice), then the TSV is separated into cells and the output is:
And, again, the information is split into columns.
Do not change how you are outputting the file; instead, find a better way of viewing the output file with an application that supports formatting tab-separated values.