length

Topic group Related topics

The maximum length of the field.

Property of

Field

Description

A field’s length represents the number of bytes used in the table for that field, and for character and numeric fields, the maximum length of the item that it can store.

For character fields, the length property represents the maximum number of characters in the string. Attempting to store more characters in that field results in the string being truncated.

For numeric fields, the length property represents the maximum number of characters in the number, including the digits, and any sign or decimal point. Attempting to store a number with more digits than the maximum results in numeric overflow, in which the actual value of the number is lost, and is simply considered to be bigger than the maximum allowed; it is usually represented by a string of asterisks.