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sql-servertextcastingvarchar

Why does casting text as varchar without specifying a length truncate the text at 30 characters?

I was searching an MS-SQL Server 2005 database to make sure that a certain text field was always a multiple of 8 in length. When I ran the following query, I got that several rows were of length 30. But when I investigated those records, I found that they were longer than that.

select distinct len(cast(textfield as varchar)) from tablename

However, if I specify the length of the varchar as something longer(as in the following query), it works fine.

select distinct len(cast(textfield as varchar(1000))) from tablename

Anybody know why it defaults to 30 and if this is a configurable setting?

Solution

  • Why is 30 the default length for VARCHAR when using CAST?