char or varchar?

What is the difference between CHAR en VARCHAR?

Roderik wrote:

> What is the difference between CHAR en VARCHAR?

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/char.html

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On Thu, 21 Apr 2005 22:15:34 +0200, Roderik <mail@roderik.net> wrote:

>What is the difference between CHAR en VARCHAR?

VAR.

For more details see the manual of the database you're using.

Usually it's to do with blank padding.

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"Roderik1" wrote:
> What is the difference between CHAR en VARCHAR?

Obviously varchar is more flexible, as your field can be any number of
chars up to the max length.

The flip side is that there is a performance penalty for having
varchars.  The penalty comes into play even if you have a single
varchar (or text) field.

It is not a big deal unless your table is huge.

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"steve" <UseLinkToEmail@dbForumz.com> wrote in message
 news:4_759021_2ac27d4dab8423897be7979e65
a4a582@dbforumz.com...
> "Roderik1" wrote: 
>
> Obviously varchar is more flexible, as your field can be any number of
> chars up to the max length.
>
> The flip side is that there is a performance penalty for having
> varchars.  The penalty comes into play even if you have a single
> varchar (or text) field.
>
> It is not a big deal unless your table is huge.
>
>

A second caveat is that in any table that contains both CHAR and BLOB
columns, the CHAR will be converted to VARCHAR automatically.

Norm
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