Help with VARCHAR needed

[Chris Sharman]

Edis, Robert wrote:
> As Quiz is meant to provide formatted output, especially to a printer, I
> would not expect what you see to be anything less than either the size of
> the longest value or the max potential size of the field.

Yes.

> Generally VARCHAR is used to A) conserve storage space as the actual amount
> used will be the length of the value plus 1 byte and B) for better data
> comparison as you don't need to worry about trailing blanks.

2 byte length (on VMS) actually.
I'd be surprised if it conserves storage space: the 'normal' 
implementation is to allocate the maximum permanently. It's possible 
that PH deallocates & reallocates heap every time the length changes, 
but I doubt it.

> The big difference between outputting a CHAR vs. VARCHAR will occur in a
> subfile.  I expect a CHAR will be right padded with spaces to the size of
> the field whereas VARCHAR will not thereby reducing the overall size of the
> subfile.

Subfiles are always fixed length (VMS), with fields at fixed positions.
Again, I'd be very surprised if that's not the case across all 
platforms. That sort of variable union is hard to handle in most languages.



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