ULENGTH
The ULENGTH function returns an integer value that is equal to the number of UTF-8 characters in a character string argument that is encoded in UTF-8.
The function type is integer.
- argument-1
- Must be of class alphabetic or alphanumeric. argument-1 must contain valid UTF-8 encoded characters.
The returned value is the number of UTF-8 characters in argument-1.
If the UTF-8 argument contains composed characters, the
combining characters are counted individually in determining the length.
For example, when encoded in UTF-8, the Unicode character ä can
be x'C3A4' or x'61CC88'. With either of the UTF-8 characters as argument-1,
the returned values of the ULENGTH function are different. See the
following table for details.
| Character | Unicode encoding | UTF-8 encoding | Returned value of the ULENGTH function |
|---|---|---|---|
| ä | U+00E4
(precomposed form,
latin small letter a with diaeresis) |
x'C3A4' | 1 |
U+0061 + U+0308
(canonical decomposition,
latin small letter a + combining diaeresis) |
x'61CC88' | 2 |