From the Books Online:

<Excerpt href="tsqlref.chm::/ts_la-lz_3e7i.htm">

LEN

Returns the number of characters, rather than the number of bytes, of the
given string expression, excluding trailing blanks.

</Excerpt>

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Hope this helps.

Dan Guzman
SQL Server MVP

"DMAC" <drmcl@drmcl.free-online.co.uk> wrote in message
news:462ac9a0.0312051628.12d7cb9e@posting.google.c om...
> I know I must be missing something pretty obvious, but what setting
> should I change to get the correct length of my string ie why does the
> select statement below return 1 when it looks fairly obvious that the
> second string is a tad longer than 1
>
> select len('a ')
> select len('a ')