Question

My server has my SQL version of 5.0.91-community, now i have to store a long string of approx about 500 character more or less, i thought of going with text data type but then someone told me it slows the performance, i wanted to know more about varchar and it’s limit.

i used to think that varchar is only limited to 255 characters, but then i read it somewhere it is capable of storing more then that in the newer version i.e >= 5.0.3 , as i am using 5.0.91 what do you think i should use? if i use it like varchar(1000) is it still valid?

thank you.

Answer 1

The documentation is here,

• varchar has a max size of 65,535 in MySQL 5.0.3 and later , before 5.0.3 the limit was 255

Note that the effective size is less,

The effective maximum length of a
VARCHAR in MySQL 5.0.3 and later is
subject to the maximum row size
(65,535 bytes, which is shared among
all columns) and the character set
used.

You have to specify the max size, e.g. varchar(1000). Just stating varchar isn’t enough.