How do I add a leading '0' to an existing value with a
data type of vachar? For example, I'd like to

There are different ways you can do this using T-SQL functions, but it is
generally recommended that you do your formatting procedures in the client
application. Anyway, here are a couple of options...

DECLARE @v VARCHAR(30)
SET @v = '1234'

--#1
SELECT RIGHT('00000' + @v, 5)

--#2
SELECT STUFF('00000', 5 - LEN(@v) + 1, LEN(@v), @v)

--#3
SELECT REPLICATE('0', 5 - DATALENGTH(@v)) + @v

--
- Anith
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