Ab Initio : Specifying the length of a string in DML

Specifying the length of a string in DML

When specifying the length of a string in DML — where the length of the string is defined as its number of characters excluding any length prefix or delimiter — you must consider whether its character set uses fixed-size storage or variable-size storage.

Fixed-size character sets are those that use fixed-size storage for characters. Examples of these include ISO-8859-1 and EBCDIC, both of which use 1 byte per character, and UTF-16, which uses 2 bytes per character.

To declare strings using fixed-size character sets, specify the number of characters for the string’s length as follows:

For fixed-length strings, specify the number of characters as fixed_length.

For delimited strings, specify the number of characters as max_len.

For length-prefixed strings, specify the number of characters as type_specifier.

Variable-size character sets are those in which character storage size varies, depending on the character. Example of these include UTF-8, EUC-JP-Unicode-0-9, and Windows-932 (commonly called Shift-JIS).

To declare strings using variable-size character sets, use the number of bytes for the string’s length as follows:

For fixed-length strings, specify the number of bytes as fixed_length.

For delimited strings, specify the number of bytes as max_len.

For length-prefixed strings, specify the number of bytes as type_specifier. Ref : Help FIle