LVARCHAR

LVARCHAR is a character data type that allows storing character data in variable-length fields as strings of single-byte or multibyte letters, numbers, symbols, white space, and unprintable characters.

You can use LVARCHAR variables both as program variables in your 4gl modules and for working with databases.

LVARCHAR variables defined in 4gl modules

In 4gl modules, you can declare these variables directly with a LVARCHAR keyword:

DEFINE var LVARCHAR(34343)

The default maximum size of an LVARCHAR variable is 2048 bytes (it is applied if you declare an LVARCHAR variable without specifying its maximum size). The total length of an LVARCHAR variable cannot exceed 65,534 bytes.

LVARCHAR columns in databases

The default maximum size of an LVARCHAR column is 2048 bytes (it is applied if you declare an LVARCHAR variable without specifying its maximum size). LVARCHAR data type is used to create columns for storing variable-length character strings up to 32,739 bytes long.

LVARCHAR data type was introduced to bypass the size limitation of the standard VARCHAR type (that used to store only 255 bytes of data).

That is why, LVARCHAR resembles the VARCHAR data type in many ways:

• You can specify the maximum size of an LVARCHAR variable when you declare this variable.
• Strings of the LVARCHAR data type are collated in the code-set order.
• Client server performs the code-set conversion of LVARCHAR data automatically if CLIENT_LOCALE differs from DB_LOCALE.
• LVARCHAR supports the built-in SQL length functions.

Unlike VARCHAR, LVARCHAR has no reserved parameter.

The database server uses LVARCHAR to represent the external format of opaque data types. In I/O operations of the database server, LVARCHAR values have no upper size limit - their size is only limited by the size of the file size or by restrictions of your operating system or hardware resources.

Static SQL statements such as CREATE TABLE can create LVARCHAR columns.