mysql> CREATE database testing CHARACTER SET utf16; Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

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Asked: June 2, 20262026-06-02T19:25:49+00:00 2026-06-02T19:25:49+00:00

mysql> CREATE database testing CHARACTER SET utf16; Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

0

mysql> CREATE database testing CHARACTER SET utf16;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> USE testing;
Database changed

mysql> CREATE TABLE t (str varchar(64));
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.43 sec)

mysql> INSET INTO t values ("1234567891234567");
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

=============================

Then I have a piece of java code

Connection connection = DriverManager.getConnection(url, usr, pass);
Statement statement = connection.createStatement();

statement.execute("USE  testing");

ResultSet rst = statement.executeQuery("SELECT str, LENGTH(str) FROM t;");
while (rst.next())
             System.out.print("java length: " + rst.getString(1).length() 
                     + "\nmysql length: " + rst.getInt(2));

This would give

java length: 16
mysql length: 32

I dont understand why the lengths are different. I explicitly set the database’s character set to UTF16 (which is the default charset of Java, right?) Why do I still get inconsistent length values?