At 1:58 AM -0500 7/27/99, David Stack wrote:
>Lets say my max record length is 30 characters in size.
>
>Would a varchar (30) column be as efficient as a varchar(255) column in
>this situation?
>
>I am pretty sure that MySQL just stores the offset by using 1 byte, so it
>should use the same amount of space reguardless of it being a varchar(30)
>or a varchar(255) (this doesn't count the extra bytes that is used for the
>actual storing of the data of coarse)
>
>Is there any disadvantage to using the varchar(255) column in the above
>situation?
None that I can see. About the only difference is that if you store
a 31-character string into a VARCHAR(30) column, the last character will
be chopped of. With VARCHAR(255), it won't be.
--
Paul DuBois, paul@stripped
