Re: behaviour of LENGTH() in postgresql v. 8

From: Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: "Marcus Andree S(dot) Magalhaes" <marcus(dot)magalhaes(at)vlinfo(dot)com(dot)br>
Cc: pgsql-novice(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: behaviour of LENGTH() in postgresql v. 8
Date: 2004-10-29 22:17:03
Message-ID: 200410292217.i9TMH3N28305@candle.pha.pa.us
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Marcus Andree S. Magalhaes wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> While checking the last Beta3-Beta4 Changelog of Postgres 8.0,
> I saw the following:
>
> * doc/TODO: Remove completed items:
> <snip>
> * -Make LENGTH() of
> CHAR() not count trailing spaces
>
> If I understand correctly, this will lead to the following situation:
>
> CHAR_LENGTH('ABCD') == CHAR_LENGTH('ABCD ') == 4
>
> This will definitely break some of our applications.
>
> Just want to be sure if this LENGTH() behaviour _will_ appear
> on the next version of Postgres. If true, can we somehow revert
> to the current LENGTH() behaviour?
>
> Can someone, please, clarify this issue?

You should review the release notes. The full description is:

* Make length() disregard trailing spaces in CHAR(n) (Gavin)
This change was made to improve consistency: trailing spaces
are semantically insignificant in CHAR(n) data, so
they should not be counted by length().

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