OCTET_LENGTH function
Returns the length of the specified string as the number of bytes.
Syntax
OCTET_LENGTH(expression)
Argument
- expression
-
The input parameter is a CHAR, VARCHAR, or VARBYTE string.
Return type
The OCTET_LENGTH function returns an integer indicating the number of bytes in the input string.
If the input string is a character string, the LEN function returns the actual number of characters in multi-byte strings, not the number of bytes. For example, to store three four-byte Chinese characters, you need a VARCHAR(12) column. The LEN function will return 3 for that same string.
Usage notes
Length calculations do not count trailing spaces for fixed-length character strings but do count them for variable-length strings.
Example
The following example returns the number of bytes and the number of characters in
the string français
.
select octet_length('français'), len('français'); octet_length | len --------------+----- 9 | 8 (1 row)