Github user marmbrus commented on the pull request:
https://github.com/apache/spark/pull/1586#issuecomment-50858199
> let us keep the "length" which can be used for non-strings e.g.
length(12345678) = 8
Non-string length as described above should probably be handled by
type-coercion with `CAST`s and not by making the expression more general.
Otherwise we will have to duplicate all of the logic that is used to turn
arbitrary types of numbers into strings.
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