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2023-04-28

VARCHAR and LONGTEXT Types In MySQL

VARCHAR and LONGTEXT Types In MySQL

In MySQL, VARCHAR and LONGTEXT are two different data types used to store character strings.

VARCHAR is a variable-length character string type that can store up to 65,535 characters. When you define a VARCHAR column, you need to specify the maximum number of characters it can hold.

For example, if you create a VARCHAR(50) column, it can store up to 50 characters. However, if you insert a string with only 10 characters, it will only use 10 characters of storage space.

LONGTEXT is also a character string type, but it can store much larger strings than VARCHAR. LONGTEXT can store up to a maximum of 4 gigabytes of characters, which is a lot more than the 65,535 character limit of VARCHAR.

The main difference between VARCHAR and LONGTEXT is the amount of storage space that they can use. If you need to store large amounts of text, such as blog posts, articles, or other long-form content, you should use the LONGTEXT data type. For smaller strings, such as usernames or email addresses, VARCHAR it is usually sufficient.