On Thursday, October 16, 2025, Sergei Katkovsky <[email protected]>
wrote:


> Manual addition is not padding, If it were, then VARCHAR would also be
> "blank-padded", because you can manually add trailing blanks to values
> of this type too. But of course it isn't.
>

The spaces added to the end of a bpchar manually can and are considered
“padding” - or “present but lack semantic/value significance”. The reason
they are not padding for varchar is that such spaces are considered part of
the stored value from a semantic perspective.

Think of padding as a noun, not a verb.  “The value contains padding”.
Not, “ I am padding the value”.

And yes, this is intended as a way to make the name of the type and its
behavior consistent.  You sorta have to want it to work/make sense; not
fight it on minor nuance.

David J.

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