On Thu, Oct 16, 2025 at 4:36 PM David G. Johnston <[email protected]> wrote: > > A given value has a finite length and there is just no restriction on what > that length is. All trailing spaces in the input are considered padding for > purposes of comparison i.e., manually padding is added by the user as opposed > to the system.
A given value of BPCHAR is stored as is, without padding or trimming (contrary to the current wording in Table 8.4 about black-trimming). But what is the point of saying that it is manually padded, if the user is free to store it without any padding? And, although technically you can say that BPCHAR is blank-padded for purposes of comparison (but saying that blanks are trimmed or ignored for that purpose is also technically correct), it is definitely not padded in other contexts, neither for concatenation, where not padding or trimming occurs at all, nor for length evaluation, where blanks are trimmed or ignored. > So bpchar(n) is automatically blank padded to a total length for a value of n > characters. bpchar also has padding blanks but they must be manually > inserted during value creation. BPCHAR(n) is definitely blank-padded to n, no doubt. BPCHAR may have trailing blanks, if and only if they are added manually. But the ability to store trailing blanks is not the same as blank-padding. Manual addition is not padding, If it were, then VARCHAR would also be "blank-padded", because you can manually add trailing blanks to values of this type too. But of course it isn't. > I would leave the note of blank-padded for both and just point out the > automatic vs manual distinction. The current wording in Table 8.4 is that BPCHAR is blank-trimmed, not blank-padded anyway. With best regards, Sergei Katkovskii
