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 Procedural SQL (PSQL) StatementsAggregate Functions 

OCTET_LENGTH()

Length in bytes (octets) of a string or binary value

Result type

INTEGER, or BIGINT for BLOB

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

string

An expression of a string type

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

Note

With arguments of type CHAR or BINARY, 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” byte length, not counting the trailing spaces, right-TRIM the argument before passing it to OCTET_LENGTH.

OCTET_LENGTH Examples

select octet_length('Hello!') from rdb$database
-- returns 6

select octet_length(_iso8859_1 'Grüß di!') from rdb$database
-- returns 8: ü and ß take up one byte each in ISO8859_1

select octet_length
  (cast (_iso8859_1 'Grüß di!' as varchar(24) character set utf8))
from rdb$database
-- returns 10: ü and ß take up two bytes each in UTF8

select octet_length
  (cast (_iso8859_1 'Grüß di!' as char(24) character set utf8))
from rdb$database
-- returns 26: all 24 CHAR positions count, and two of them are 2-byte
See also

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