I wonder how widespread the MicroSoft behavior is Sybase ASE, for example, gives this result set:
30 5 30 5 That seems more appropriate to me. -Kevin > "Dann Corbit" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > I guess that additional ambiguity arises if you add additional spaces to > > the end. Many database systems solve this by trimming the characters > > from the end of the string upon storage and the returned string will not > > have any trailing blanks. > > Can you document that? ISTM that that would effectively make char(n) > and varchar(n) exactly equivalent, which is ... um ... a bit stupid. This is SQL*Server: drop table test_char go create table test_char( fixed_30 char(30), varch_30 varchar(30), nchar_30 nchar(30), nvarc_30 nvarchar(30) ) go insert into test_char values('Dann ', 'Dann ', 'Dann ', 'Dann ') go select len(fixed_30), len(varch_30), len(nchar_30), len(nvarc_30) from test_char go Result set: 4 4 4 4 ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster