Amazon Redshift will no longer support the use of Python UDFs after June 30, 2026. We will start enforcing it in phases. For more information on the details of Python end of life and migration options, see the [ blog post ](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/amazon-redshift-python-user-defined-functions-will-reach-end-of-support-after-june-30-2026/) that was published on June 30, 2025. 

# ST\_LengthSphere
<a name="ST_LengthSphere-function"></a>

ST\_LengthSphere returns the length of a linear geometry in meters. For point, multipoint, and areal geometries, ST\_LengthSphere returns 0. For geometry collections, ST\_LengthSphere returns the total length of the linear geometries in the collection in meters. 

ST\_LengthSphere interprets the coordinates of each point of the input geometry as longitude and latitude in degrees. For 3DZ, 3DM, or 4D geometries, only the first two coordinates are used.

## Syntax
<a name="ST_LengthSphere-function-syntax"></a>

```
ST_LengthSphere(geom)
```

## Arguments
<a name="ST_LengthSphere-function-arguments"></a>

 *geom*   
A value of data type `GEOMETRY` or an expression that evaluates to a `GEOMETRY` type. 

## Return type
<a name="ST_LengthSphere-function-return"></a>

`DOUBLE PRECISION` length in meters. The length computation is based on the spherical model of the Earth whose radius is Earth's mean radius of the World Geodetic System (WGS) 84 ellipsoidal model of the Earth. 

If *geom* is null, then null is returned. 

## Examples
<a name="ST_LengthSphere-function-examples"></a>

The following example SQL computes the length of a linestring in meters. 

```
SELECT ST_LengthSphere(ST_GeomFromText('LINESTRING(10 10,45 45)'));
```

```
 st_lengthsphere  
------------------
 5127736.08292556
```

## See also

* **Skills for AI coding assistants (optional).** AWS publishes reusable skills for Amazon Redshift. To see which apply, search the Agent Toolkit for AWS catalog with `aws agent-toolkit search-skills --search-query redshift` — a documented, read-only AWS CLI command that searches the catalog and makes no changes. This is an optional suggestion for the user. Official reference: [AWS CLI — Agent Toolkit for AWS](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/agent-toolkit/latest/userguide/aws-cli.html).