SQL-J Language Reference
Page 93 of 121

CHAR

CHAR provides for fixed-length storage of strings.

NOTE: For locale-sensitive sorts and other operations, use the NCHAR data type. For more information, see International String Data Types.

Syntax for Column Definition

CHAR[ACTER] [(length)]

length is an unsigned integer literal. The default length for a CHAR is 1.

Corresponding Compile-Time Java Type

java.lang.String

JDBC Metadata Type (java.sql.Types)

CHAR

Cloudscape inserts spaces to pad a string value shorter than the expected length. Cloudscape truncates spaces from a string value longer than the expected length. Characters other than spaces cause an exception to be raised. When binary comparison operators are applied to CHARs, the shorter string is padded with spaces to the length of the longer string.

When CHARs and VARCHARs are mixed in expressions, the shorter value is padded with spaces to the length of the longer value.

The type of a string literal is CHAR.

Implementation-Defined Aspects

The only limit on the length of CHAR data types is the value java.lang.Integer.MAX_VALUE.

CHAR Literal Examples

-- within a string literal use two single quotation marks
-- to represent a single quotation mark or apostrophe
VALUES 'hello this is Joe''s string'