Get The Length Of A String

Return the number of characters in a string using `LENGTH` or `LEN`.

Created Apr 11, 2026 Last updated Apr 10, 2026 5/5 supported engines validation-green 1 example 2 scenarios

Docker-validated Not currently validation-green

Example 1

Get the character count of each product name

'Keyboard' has 8 characters, 'Mouse' has 5, and 'Monitor' has 7. The results are identical across engines for these inputs because none of the values have trailing spaces that would cause LEN() and LENGTH() to differ.

MySQL MariaDB PostgreSQL SQLite

Engine-specific syntax

Source table data

Setup

CREATE TABLE products (id INT, name VARCHAR(50));

INSERT INTO
  products (id, name)
VALUES
  (1, 'Keyboard'),
  (2, 'Mouse'),
  (3, 'Monitor');

Validated query

SQL

SELECT
  id,
  name,
  LENGTH (name) AS name_length
FROM
  products
ORDER BY
  id;

Expected result

id	name	name_length
1	Keyboard	8
2	Mouse	5
3	Monitor	7

SQL Server

Engine-specific syntax

Source table data

Setup

CREATE TABLE products (id INT, name VARCHAR(50));

INSERT INTO
  products (id, name)
VALUES
  (1, 'Keyboard'),
  (2, 'Mouse'),
  (3, 'Monitor');

Validated query

SQL

SELECT
  id,
  name,
  LEN (name) AS name_length
FROM
  products
ORDER BY
  id;

Expected result

id	name	name_length
1	Keyboard	8
2	Mouse	5
3	Monitor	7

SQL Server uses LEN() while other engines use LENGTH(). Results are identical for strings without trailing spaces.

Useful when

Where this command helps.

measuring the length of text values for validation or reporting
ordering or filtering results by string length

Explanation

What the command is doing.

MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL use LENGTH(string) to return the number of characters. SQL Server uses LEN(string), which also trims trailing spaces before counting. For byte length of multi-byte strings, use OCTET_LENGTH (MySQL/PostgreSQL) or DATALENGTH (SQL Server).

Get The Length Of A String

Get the character count of each product name

Where this command helps.

What the command is doing.

Keep moving through nearby tasks.