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Why are VARCHAR strings sometimes padded?

April 26, 2017padded strings varchar

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10 Posted

Why are VARCHAR strings sometimes padded?

1 Answer

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10 Posted

Till v.6.5 InterBase sent VARCHAR columns padded to the full length with spaces (0x20) similar to CHAR. In 6.5 this was changed by Borland so that VARCHARs are no longer padded, as expected. IB 6.0 and FB 1.0 pads VARCHARs too. However, if FB 1.0 is accessed via JayBird, it does NOT pad VARCHARs and sends them correctly. From one of the posts in the Firebird devel list this issue seems to appear when using the gds32.dll under Windows but not with the INET protocol.