Amazon Redshift will no longer support the creation of new Python UDFs starting November 1, 2025. If you would like to use Python UDFs, create the UDFs prior to that date. Existing Python UDFs will continue to function as normal. For more information, see the blog post .

Examples with character types

CREATE TABLE statement

The following CREATE TABLE statement demonstrates the use of VARCHAR and CHAR data types:

create table address(
address_id integer,
address1 varchar(100),
address2 varchar(50),
district varchar(20),
city_name char(20),
state char(2),
postal_code char(5)
);

The following examples use this table.

Trailing blanks in variable-length character strings

Because ADDRESS1 is a VARCHAR column, the trailing blanks in the second inserted address are semantically insignificant. In other words, these two inserted addresses match.

insert into address(address1) values('9516 Magnolia Boulevard');

insert into address(address1) values('9516 Magnolia Boulevard  ');

select count(*) from address
where address1='9516 Magnolia Boulevard';

count
-------
2
(1 row)

If the ADDRESS1 column were a CHAR column and the same values were inserted, the COUNT(*) query would recognize the character strings as the same and return 2.

Results of the LENGTH function

The LENGTH function recognizes trailing blanks in VARCHAR columns:

select length(address1) from address;

length
--------
23
25
(2 rows)

A value of Augusta in the CITY_NAME column, which is a CHAR column, would always return a length of 7 characters, regardless of any trailing blanks in the input string.

Values that exceed the length of the column

Character strings are not truncated to fit the declared width of the column:

insert into address(city_name) values('City of South San Francisco');
ERROR: value too long for type character(20)

A workaround for this problem is to cast the value to the size of the column:

insert into address(city_name)
values('City of South San Francisco'::char(20));

In this case, the first 20 characters of the string (City of South San Fr) would be loaded into the column.