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 Procedural SQL (PSQL) StatementsAggregate Functions 

BIT_LENGTH()

String or binary length in bits

Result type

INTEGER, or BIGINT for BLOB

Syntax
BIT_LENGTH (string)
Table 1. BIT_LENGTH Function Parameter
Parameter Description

string

An expression of a string type

Gives the length in bits of the input string.For multi-byte character sets, this may be less than the number of characters times 8 times the “formal” number of bytes per character as found in RDB$CHARACTER_SETS.

Note

With arguments of type CHAR, this function takes the entire formal string length (i.e. the declared length of a field or variable) into account.If you want to obtain the “logical” bit length, not counting the trailing spaces, right-TRIM the argument before passing it to BIT_LENGTH.

BIT_LENGTH Examples

select bit_length('Hello!') from rdb$database
-- returns 48

select bit_length(_iso8859_1 'Grüß di!') from rdb$database
-- returns 64: ü and ß take up one byte each in ISO8859_1

select bit_length
  (cast (_iso8859_1 'Grüß di!' as varchar(24) character set utf8))
from rdb$database
-- returns 80: ü and ß take up two bytes each in UTF8

select bit_length
  (cast (_iso8859_1 'Grüß di!' as char(24) character set utf8))
from rdb$database
-- returns 208: all 24 CHAR positions count, and two of them are 16-bit
See also

[fblangref50-scalarfuncs-octet-length], [fblangref50-scalarfuncs-char-length]