Hi Olaf, For soon to be a decade I'm fighting with this question... !!! It's not a silly one... it's quite a tricky one...
As many have noticed all INTEGER types (SMALLINT, MEDIUMINT, INT, BIGINT) have a "LENGTH"... by all means I can assure you that it has nothing to do with the maximum number you can store in a column or the size on the disk ! The only situation, known to me, when the "length" has a value is with the ZEROFILL atribute. Let's say you have 2 numbers to be stored: 4567 456789 If you insert then in a table in a column with the definition: INT(6) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0 You will get the same values and any value will take 4 bytes on the disk. If you insert then in a table in a column with the definition: INT(6) ZEROFILL NOT NULL DEFAULT 0 You will get : 004567 456789 as values and any value will also take 4 bytes on the disk. The only notable difference... as you can see... is in prepending 0 to the number to reach the desired "length"... if the number is greater than or equal to the declared "length" it has no effect. So AFAIK this is the purpose of the "length"...in INTEGER columns. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Gabriel PREDA Senior Web Developer -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
