CHARACTER_LENGTH or CHAR_LENGTH

The CHARACTER_LENGTH function returns the length of the first argument in the specified string unit.

FL 506

Character string:

Graphic string:

The schema is SYSIBM.

Character string:

character-expression

An expression that returns a value of a built-in character string. character-expression cannot be bit data.

The argument can also be a numeric data type. The numeric argument is implicitly cast to a VARCHAR data type.

CODEUNITS16, CODEUNITS32, or OCTETS

Specifies the unit that is used to express the length of the result.

CODEUNITS16: Specifies that the result is expressed in terms of 16-bit UTF-16 code units.
CODEUNITS32: Specifies that the result is expressed in terms of 32-bit UTF-32 code units.
OCTETS: Specifies the result is expressed in terms of bytes.

For more information about CODEUNITS16, CODEUNITS32, and OCTETS, see String unit specifications.

The result of the function is a large integer.

The result can be null; if the argument is null, the result is the null value.

The result is the length of character-expression expressed in the number of string units that were specified. The length of fixed-length strings includes trailing blanks. The length of varying-length strings is the actual length and not the maximum length.

Graphic string:

graphic-expression

An expression that returns a value of a built-in graphic string.

The argument can also be a numeric data type. The numeric argument is implicitly cast to a VARCHAR data type.

CODEUNITS16 or CODEUNITS32

Specifies the unit that is used to express the length of the result.

CODEUNITS16: Specifies that the result is expressed in terms of 16-bit UTF-16 code units.
CODEUNITS32: Specifies that the result is expressed in terms of 32-bit UTF-32 code units.

For more information about CODEUNITS16 and CODEUNITS32 see String unit specifications.

The result of the function is a large integer.

The result can be null; if the argument is null, the result is the null value.

The result is the length of graphic-expression expressed in the number of string units that were specified. The length of fixed-length strings includes trailing blanks. The length of varying-length strings is the actual length and not the maximum length.

Example: Assume that NAME is a VARCHAR(128) column, encoded in Unicode UTF-8, that contains the value 'Jürgen'. The following two queries return the value 6:

   SELECT CHARACTER_LENGTH(NAME,CODEUNITS32)
     FROM T1 WHERE NAME = 'Jürgen';
   SELECT CHARACTER_LENGTH(NAME,CODEUNITS16)
     FROM T1 WHERE NAME = 'Jürgen';

The following two queries return the value 7:

   SELECT CHARACTER_LENGTH(NAME,OCTETS)
     FROM T1 WHERE NAME = 'Jürgen';
   SELECT LENGTH(NAME)
     FROM T1 WHERE NAME = 'Jürgen';