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MySQL | BIT_LENGTH method

schedule Aug 12, 2023
Last updated
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MySQL
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MySQL's BIT_LENGTH(~) method returns the length of a string in bits.

Parameters

1. str | string

The string whose length we want to return.

Return value

The length of the input string in bits.

Examples

Consider the following table about some students:

student_id

fname

lname

day_enrolled

age

username

1

Sky

Towner

2015-12-03

17

stowner1

2

Ben

Davis

2016-04-20

19

bdavis2

3

Travis

Apple

2018-08-14

18

tapple3

4

Arthur

David

2016-04-01

16

adavid4

5

Benjamin

Town

2014-01-01

17

btown5

The above sample table can be created using the code here.

Basic usage

To return length of student first names in bits:

SELECT BIT_LENGTH(fname)
FROM students;
-------------------+
| BIT_LENGTH(fname) |
+-------------------+
| 24 |
| 24 |
| 48 |
| 48 |
| 64 |
+-------------------+

Each character is represented using 1 byte (8bits) as these are ASCII characters.

To check bits used to represent the Japanese character 'あ':

SELECT BIT_LENGTH('あ');
+-------------------+
| BIT_LENGTH('あ') |
+-------------------+
| 24 |
+-------------------+

The Japanese character 'あ' is stored using 3 bytes, hence the length is 24 bits.

robocat
Published by Arthur Yanagisawa
Edited by 0 others
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