VARCHAR2(1) vs CHAR(1)

From: Norman Dunbar <Norman.Dunbar_at_lfs.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2002 08:35:11 +0100
Message-ID: <E2F6A70FE45242488C865C3BC1245DA7026F6997@lnewton.leeds.lfs.co.uk>

Morning Stjepan,

I recently discovered a set of tables in one of our Uniface repositories which had been set up with CHAR and not with VARCHAR2. This caused problems when using Uniface to generate table creation scripts as it assums that the destination database will be in the same format as the developers source code repository. (Major PITA !) So I was asked to change all the CHARs to VARCHARS.

I exported the tables, dropped them and ran the script to recreate them in VARCHAR2. I then imported the old CHAR data - and all hell broke loose :o(
The CHARS imported complete with their trailling spaces so I had a couple of hours running scripts to find all the VARCHAR2 fields which had trailing spaces and RTRIM them out. Much fun !!

If you do change a table from CHAR to VARCHAR2 - just be careful !!!

Regards,
Norman.

Norman Dunbar
Database/Unix administrator
Lynx Financial Systems Ltd.
mailto:Norman.Dunbar_at_LFS.co.uk

Tel: 0113 289 6265
Fax: 0113 289 3146
URL: http://www.Lynx-FS.com


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-----Original Message-----

From: Stjepan Brbot [mailto:stjepan.brbot_at_zg.hinet.hr] Posted At: Sunday, July 28, 2002 10:40 PM Posted To: server
Conversation: VARCHAR2(1) vs CHAR(1)
Subject: Re: VARCHAR2(1) vs CHAR(1)

If I change VARCHAR2(1) into CHAR(1) column type in table, what could happened? Will the application (expecting the VARCHAR2(1) column type) work correctly anymore by automatically converting the value from CHAR(1) into VARCHAR2(1) type?

Stjepan Brbot Received on Tue Jul 30 2002 - 02:35:11 CDT