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

>>So where's the advantage of VARCHAR ? > > Less space on disc = less data retrieved from disc = faster data > retrieval - sometimes. If you have small columns, a small number of > rows, or both, then char columns may be faster. If you have large > columns of varying actual length, lots of rows, or both, then varchar > columns may be faster. I still think a CHAR field would be faster than a VARCHAR because of the fixed row length (assuming every thing else is fixed). Perhaps someone from the MySQL list could clarify...? -- Richard Heyes HTML5 Graphing for FF, Chrome, Opera and Safari: http://www.rgraph.org (Updated January 4th)