LENGTH( )

The LENGTH( ) function returns the number of bytes in its string argument after deleting all trailing spaces.

The LENGTH( ) function returns an integer value, based on the length (in bytes) of its character-expression argument.

The following are among the possible uses for the LENGTH( ) function:

You can check whether a user has entered a database name and, if not, set a default name.

Check whether the user has supplied the name of a file to receive the output from a report and, if not, set a default output.

Check whether a file name is longer than n characters (and therefore not DOS compatible).

Use LENGTH(string) as the maximum value in a FOR loop, and then check each character in string for a specific character. For example, you can check for . to determine whether a table name has an owner prefix.

Using LENGTH( ) in SQL Expressions

Unlike some other built-in functions of 4GL, you can use LENGTH( ) in SQL statements, as well as in other 4GL statements. LENGTH( ) can also be called from a C function. (That is, the database engine supports a function of the same name and of similar functionality.)

In a SELECT or UPDATE statement, the argument of LENGTH( ) is the identifier of a character column. In this instance, LENGTH( ) returns the number of bytes in the CLIPPED data value (for CHAR or VARCHAR columns) or the full number of bytes (for TEXT and BYTE data types).

The LENGTH( ) function can also take the name of a database column as its argument, but only within an SQL statement.

References

CLIPPED

USING