DATALENGTH (Transact-SQL)

Syntax

DATALENGTH (expression )

Arguments

• expression
  Is an expression of any data type.

Return Types

bigint if expression is of the varchar(max), nvarchar(max) or varbinary(max) data types; otherwise int.

Remarks

DATALENGTH is especially useful with varchar, varbinary, text, image, nvarchar, and ntext data types because these data types can store variable-length data.

The DATALENGTH of NULL is NULL.

Examples

The following example finds the length of the Name column in the Product table.

USE AdventureWorks;
GO
SELECT length = DATALENGTH(Name), Name
FROM Production.Product
ORDER BY Name;
GO

See Also

Reference