Length and Size Functions

CHAR_LENGTH

The CHAR_LENGTH(str) function returns string length measured in characters.

A multi-byte character counts as single character such as a string contains 5 two-byte characters, then LENGTH() function returns 10, but the CHAR_LENGTH() returns 5.

CHARACTER_LENGTH(str)

This function is same as CHAR_LENGTH().

CHARACTER_LENGTH

Synonym for CHAR_LENGTH.

LENGTH

The LENGTH function returns the length of the string argument in bytes. A multi-byte character counts as multiple bytes. This means that for a string containing a three-byte character, LENGTH() returns 3, whereas CHAR_LENGTH() returns 1. For example:

select length('€');

Returns 3

The is because the Euro sign is encoded as 0xE282AC in UTF-8 and thereby occupies 3 bytes.

OCTET_LENGTH

A synonym for LENGTH().

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