col_length

Returns the defined length of a column.

Syntax

col_length(object_name, column_name)

Parameters

object_name – is name of a database object, such as a table, view, procedure, trigger, default, or rule. The name can be fully qualified (that is, it can include the database and owner name). It must be enclosed in quotes.
column_name – is the name of the column.

Examples

Example 1 – Finds the length of the title column in the titles table. The “x” gives a column heading to the result:
```
select x = col_length("titles", "title")
```
```
 x
---- 
   80
```

Usage

To find the actual length of the data stored in each row, use datalength.

For:

text, unitext, and image columns – col_length returns 16, the length of the binary(16) pointer to the actual text page.
unichar columns – the defined length is the number of Unicode values declared when the column was defined (not the number of bytes represented).

See also Transact-SQL Users Guide.

Standards

ANSI SQL – Compliance level: Transact-SQL extension.

Permissions

Any user can execute col_length.

Parent topic: Transact-SQL Functions

Related reference

Created May 28, 2014. Send feedback on this help topic to Technical Publications: pubs@sap.com