Question

Compare these two statements

select stuff(convert(varchar(max),replicate('a', 10000)),8001,1,'b')
select stuff(convert(varchar(max),replicate('a', 10000)),8000,1,'b')

Output

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...
NULL

Books Online says start can be of type bigint. Why such a large range if it won’t even work for 8001?

If the behaviour is different between 2005, 2008, 2008 R2 and Denali, then I would like to know the actual behaviour of each version.

Answer 1

REPLICATE ('a', 10000) will produce a 8000 characters string:

If string_expression is not of type
varchar(max) or nvarchar(max),
REPLICATE truncates the return value
at 8,000 bytes. To return values
greater than 8,000 bytes,
string_expression must be explicitly
cast to the appropriate large-value
data type.

Try REPLICATE (cast('a' as varchar(max)), 10000).