Versions: MySQL 5.x, 4.x and 3.23
| MySQL - NCHAR | |
|---|---|
| Syntax | NCHAR[(n)] |
| Data | Fixed-length character data in the predefined character set - UTF8 |
| Parameters | n is the maximum number of characters, optional |
| Range | 0 ⇐ n ⇐ 255 |
| Default | n is 1 |
| Padding | Right-padded with spaces to n |
| Trailing Spaces | Removed when the value is retrieved if PAD_CHAR_TO_FULL_LENGTH SQL mode is not specified. Trailing spaces are insignificant in comparisons, primary and unique keys |
| Empty String | CHAR(0) is allowed that can store 2 values: '' (empty string) and NULL |
| Error Handling | Exceeding data truncated and a warning is generated if strict SQL mode is not enabled, otherwise in case of non-space characters truncation, an error is raised |
| Storage Size | n bytes |
| Notes | NCHAR is equivalent to CHAR CHARACTER SET UTF8 |
| Synonyms | NATIONAL CHAR, NATIONAL CHARACTER |
| Standards | ANSI SQL |
MySQL NCHAR - Equivalents in Other Databases
| Database | Data Type and Conversion |
|---|---|
| Oracle | NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 2000/charsize, Unicode - UTF-8 or UTF-16 |
| SQL Server | NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 4000, Unicode - UCS-2 |
| IBM DB2 | GRAPHIC(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 127, double-byte |
| PostgreSQL | CHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 1G |
| Sybase ASE | NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ pagesize (2K, 4K, 8K or 16K), Character set - database default UNICHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ pagesize, Unicode |
| Sybase ASA | NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 8191, Unicode - UTF-8 |
| Informix | NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 32767, database character set |
| Teradata | CHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 64000/charsize |
| HP Neoview | NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ (32708 - size of other columns), Unicode - UCS-2 or ISO88591 (Latin1) |
| Interbase/Firebird | NCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 32767, single-byte ISO8859_1 (Latin 1); CHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 32767, with CHARACTER SET UTF-8 |
Related Data Types in MySQL
| Data Types | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed-length character data | CHAR(n) | ||||
| Variable-length character data | VARCHAR(n) | NVARCHAR(n) | TINYTEXT | TEXT | MEDIUMTEXT |
| Character large objects | LONGTEXT | ||||
All Data Types
| Oracle | SQL Server | IBM DB2 | MySQL | PostgreSQL | Sybase ASE | Sybase ASA | Informix DS | Teradata | HP Neoview | Interbase/Firebird |
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