Versions: MySQL 5.x, 4.x and 3.23
| MySQL - VARCHAR | |
|---|---|
| Syntax | VARCHAR(n) [CHARACTER SET charset | BINARY | ASCII | UNICODE ] [COLLATE collate] |
| Data | Variable-length character data, single-byte and multibyte character sets |
| Parameters | n is the maximum number of characters, optional. CHARACTER SET specifies the character set, COLLATE specifies a collation for the character set. ASCII is equal to CHARACTER SET latin1, UNICODE is equal to CHARACTER SET ucs2, BINARY is equal to specifying the binary collation |
| Range | 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 65535/charsize (65535 is the maximum row size shared among all columns) |
| Default | n is mandatory |
| Padding | Not right-padded with spaces to n |
| Trailing Spaces | Not removed when the value is stored and retrieved. But trailing spaces are insignificant in comparisons, primary and unique keys |
| 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 If strict SQL mode is not enabled, a VARCHAR column with a length greater than 65535 is converted to TEXT, otherwise an error is generated |
| Storage Size | Actual entry length |
| Internals | If CHARACTER SET binary is specified, it is automatically converted to the VARBINARY data type without warning |
| Version Differences | MySQL 4.1 and later - CHARACTER SET and COLLATE options are available. MySQL 4.0.2 and earlier - 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 255 |
| Synonyms | CHAR VARYING, CHARACTER VARYING |
| Standards | ANSI SQL |
MySQL VARCHAR - Equivalents in Other Databases
| Database | Data Type and Conversion |
|---|---|
| Oracle | VARCHAR2(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 4000/charsize |
| SQL Server | VARCHAR(n | max), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 8000, 2G if max is specified |
| PostgreSQL | VARCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 1G |
| Sybase ASE | VARCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ pagesize (2K, 4K, 8K or 16K) |
| Informix | VARCHAR(n,r), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 255, LVARCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ 32739 |
| HP Neoview | VARCHAR(n), 1 ⇐ n ⇐ (32708 - size of other columns) |
Related Data Types in MySQL
| Data Types | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed-length character data | CHAR(n) | NCHAR(n) | |||
| Variable-length character data | 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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