CHARACTER_LENGTH

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Syntax

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Scalar

character_length(value)

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Arguments

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Returns

• Type: INTEGER; BIGINT for strings using large-string storage
• Possible values: A nonnegative count of Unicode code points; zero for an empty string.
• NULL behavior: Returns NULL for NULL input.

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Properties

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Units

• Input unit: UTF-8 string
• Output unit: Unicode code points
• octet_length counts UTF-8 bytes instead.

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Usage notes

• A combined visible grapheme can contain several Unicode code points.

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Examples

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Typical behavior

SELECT character_length('josé') AS characters, character_length('') AS empty_value;

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Unicode characters and trailing spaces

SELECT character_length('é猫') AS character_count, character_length('cat ') AS with_space;

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Limitations

• Some large-string columns return a BIGINT count even when query tools report INTEGER.