To: Matthew Hagerty <matthew@venux.net>
cc: pgsql-interfaces@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [INTERFACES] (libpq question) Holy cow, what's all this fluff?! 
In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 14 Feb 1999 00:17:59 -0500
	<4.1.19990214001552.009894c0@mail.venux.net>
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1999 13:45:18 -0500
Message-ID: <7750.919017918@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

Matthew Hagerty <matthew@venux.net> writes:
> At 04:30 AM 2/14/99 +0000, Thomas G. Lockhart wrote:
>>> You want a varchar (or is it bpchar?), not a char. char(x) will always 
>>> return x characters, with space padding if necessary.

> Yeah, but the docs say you get a performance hit for using varchar, text,
> and the like.  Which is worse, the database performance hit or the extra
> call to trim for every char field?

Whatever docs you are looking at are obsolete.  char(n), varchar(n), and
text have essentially interchangeable performance and representation.
They all have a length word and some characters.

(I've griped about that myself --- particularly that plain "char" is
effectively an 8-byte field, not a 1-byte field like you'd expect.
Nobody else seems worried about it though.)

I'd recommend using "text", personally, unless you have a specific
reason for imposing an upper length limit on the string.

			regards, tom lane