Re: Because you guys/gals/girls/women/insert pc term here are a smart lot

> It may be worth mentioning that, IIRC, CHAR is faster due to the fixed > length. If you can make your table use a fixed length row size (ie no > variable length columns), it'll be faster. I'd be interested in seeing tests about this.. I doubt there's any difference. > Also I could be missing > something, but I can't see the advantage in VARCHAR since space is not > really a concern these days. char is fixed length and padded. If you don't fill up the space, the db does it for you (even though it seems it's internal only). http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/char.html When CHAR values are stored, they are right-padded with spaces to the specified length. When CHAR values are retrieved, trailing spaces are removed. -- Postgresql & php tutorials http://www.designmagick.com/