Received: from localhost (postgresql.org [64.49.215.8]) by postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 351144760FA for ; Tue, 8 Oct 2002 01:43:46 -0400 (EDT) Received: from www.pspl.co.in (www.pspl.co.in [202.54.11.65]) by postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 76CB4475EF0 for ; Tue, 8 Oct 2002 01:43:43 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from root@localhost) by www.pspl.co.in (8.11.6/8.11.6) id g985jGF22144 for ; Tue, 8 Oct 2002 11:15:16 +0530 Received: from daithan (daithan.intranet.pspl.co.in [192.168.7.161]) by www.pspl.co.in (8.11.6/8.11.0) with ESMTP id g985jGv22134; Tue, 8 Oct 2002 11:15:16 +0530 From: "Shridhar Daithankar" To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org, pgsql-general , pgsql-performance@postgresql.org Date: Tue, 08 Oct 2002 11:14:11 +0530 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: [pgsql-performance] Large databases, performance Reply-To: shridhar_daithankar@persistent.co.in Message-ID: <3DA2BE03.3674.13CF7DD1@localhost> References: <3DA1E50F.4394.107FF85D@localhost> In-reply-to: <23897.1034004117@sss.pgh.pa.us> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v4.02) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS new-20020517 X-Archive-Number: 200210/418 X-Sequence-Number: 31416 On 7 Oct 2002 at 11:21, Tom Lane wrote: > "Shridhar Daithankar" writes: > > I say if it's a char field, there should be no indicator of length as > > it's not required. Just store those many characters straight ahead.. > > Your assumption fails when considering UNICODE or other multibyte > character encodings. Correct but is it possible to have real char string when database is not unicode or when locale defines size of char, to be exact? In my case varchar does not make sense as all strings are guaranteed to be of defined length. While the argument you have put is correct, it's causing a disk space leak, to say so. Bye Shridhar -- Boucher's Observation: He who blows his own horn always plays the music several octaves higher than originally written.