LENGTH

The LENGTH function returns the length of a value.

LENGTH(expression)

See CHARACTER_LENGTH, OCTET_LENGTH, and BIT_LENGTH for similar functions.

expression: An expression that returns a value of any built-in data type.

The result of the function is a large integer. If the argument can be null, the result can be null; if the argument is null, the result is the null value.

The result is the length of the argument. The length of strings includes blanks. The length of a varying-length string is the actual length, not the length attribute.

The length of a graphic string is the number of double-byte characters (the number of bytes divided by 2). The length of all other values is the number of bytes used to represent the value:

2 for small integer
4 for large integer
8 for big integer
The integral part of (p/2)+1 for packed decimal numbers with precision p
p for zoned decimal numbers with precision p
4 for single-precision float
8 for double-precision float
8 for DECFLOAT(16)
16 for DECFLOAT(34)
The length of the string for strings
3 for time
4 for date
7+(p+1)/2 for timestamp(p)
The actual number of bytes used to store the DataLink value (plus 19 if the DataLink is FILE LINK CONTROL and READ PERMISSION DB) for datalinks
26 for row ID

Examples

Assume the host variable ADDRESS is a varying-length character string with a value of ‘895 Don Mills Road'.
```
  SELECT LENGTH(:ADDRESS)
    FROM SYSIBM.SYSDUMMY1
```
Returns the value 18.
Assume that PRSTDATE is a column of type DATE.
```
  SELECT LENGTH(PRSTDATE)
    FROM PROJECT
```
Returns the value 4.

Assume that PRSTDATE is a column of type DATE.

  SELECT LENGTH(CHAR(PRSTDATE, EUR))
    FROM PROJECT

Returns the value 10.