Questions about (n)(var)char(2)

I'm learning oracle, i't is going slow
but I'm making some progress.
I've been reading about the different datatypes and have some questions about the character types.

Question 1:
The varchar2 and nvarchar2 datatypes are variable-length fields, what does that mean ? If I make a field 1000 characters long and I put only 1 character in it, it would take only 1 character in the database instead of 1000 characters ?

Question 2:
Is there a reason to use char type ? or is it always better to use varchar2 type. Are char types faster to index / search ?

Question 3:
nvarchar2 is for support of multi-byte character set ??? what does that mean ? is that for support of special characters (é, ë, etc....) ?

thanks in advance,
Johan Received on Mon Mar 13 2000 - 04:49:33 CST