string

LENGTH()

Returns the number of characters in a string.

Description

LENGTH counts the number of characters in a string. It's useful for validating data (like checking that a code has a fixed number of characters), sorting by how long a value is, or filtering out unusually short or long text.

Syntax

LENGTH(string)

Parameters

Name	Description	Optional
string	The text value or column to measure.	No

Return Type

LENGTH returns a BIGINT, the character count.

Examples

Movies (Movies/Actors/Ratings)

Loading database engine...

Movies (Movies/Actors/Ratings)

Loading database engine...

LENGTH counts characters, not bytes

For most text this matches what you'd expect, but with multi-byte characters (accents, emoji, non-Latin scripts), LENGTH still counts characters, not raw storage bytes, which is usually what you want.

Common Mistakes

Confusing LENGTH with counting words. LENGTH('The Matrix') returns 10 (including the space), not the number of words.
Forgetting that leading or trailing spaces count. 'Avatar ' with a trailing space has a different length than 'Avatar', which can cause confusing off-by-one results if the data has inconsistent spacing.
Applying LENGTH to a NULL value and expecting 0. LENGTH(NULL) returns NULL, not 0, since there's no string to measure.