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#1 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 07:06 PM

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 ')

#2 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 07:06 PM

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>

--
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 ')

#3 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 07:06 PM

DMAC (drmcl@drmcl.free-online.co.uk) writes:
> 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 ')

In addition to Dan's response, if you need to know the length including
the trailing blanks, use the datalength() function. Beware that this
function returns the length in bytes, so if you use datalength on
Unicode data, you need to divide the result by two to get the length
in characters.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, sommar@algonet.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinf...2000/books.asp

#4 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 07:06 PM

Erland, thanks for adding this. I should have included the alternative
DATALENGTH function in my response.

--
Dan Guzman
SQL Server MVP

"Erland Sommarskog" <sommar@algonet.se> wrote in message
news:Xns9449ED1F41AA5Yazorman@127.0.0.1...
> DMAC (drmcl@drmcl.free-online.co.uk) writes:
> > 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 ')
>
> In addition to Dan's response, if you need to know the length including
> the trailing blanks, use the datalength() function. Beware that this
> function returns the length in bytes, so if you use datalength on
> Unicode data, you need to divide the result by two to get the length
> in characters.
>
> --
> Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, sommar@algonet.se
>
> Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
> http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinf...2000/books.asp

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