IBM REXX Interview Question:

I am trying to pass value of an variable, from panel to rexx program, the main issue is the leading and trailing spaces are removed, we are getting only the data item,
ex: 33 . (exclude . )
in this sinario we need to get length of that field as 6(2 for leading and 2 for trailing spaces) but i am getting only 2 bytes as length, can any one can help in this