No. You are interpreting that parameter incorrectly.
http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/REFRN/GUID-221B0A5E-A17A-4CBC-8309-3A79508466F9.htm#REFRN10124
http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/NLSPG/ch2charset.htm#NLSPG170
Length semantics = Byte says "when I define a column as "col-name
VARCHAR2(x)", the x is taken in bytes, regardless of character set. So
"MyCOL VARCHAR2(20)" in byte semantics could be five to 20 characters
(maximum) of storage allocated. If each character was unicode and used
4 bytes, all you could store is 5 characters.
You still want to find out the actual character set:
http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/REFRN/GUID-3BCC0324-8FEC-409F-8472-74A72FDE310F.htm#REFRN30159
/Hans
On 11/03/2016 9:55 AM, Zelli, Brian wrote:
So if nls_length_semantics is set to byte, can I assume the 1 char = 1 byte
rule?
Brian
-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of Hans Forbrich
Sent: Friday, March 11, 2016 11:48 AM
To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: bytes vs chars
I think the sentiment is correct, but there is a minor correction to the
wording:
Unicode is an attempt to get all different character sets into one
superset, and is multi-byte in nature. The AL32UTF8 encoding for
Unicode allows a character to be represented in the fewest required of 1, 2, 3
or 4 bytes, based on the Quick Link 'Code Charts' at http://unicode.org/
The 1 character = 1 byte group are often known as 'single byte character sets'
or 'single byte encoding'. These include ASCII and various ISO
8859 sets. A handy reference is at
http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/NLSPG/ch2charset.htm#NLSPG166
Therefore, I think the statement should be corrected to
"If you're using a single-byte characterset then 1character = 1 byte.
But if you're using a multibyte Unicode characterset then a character can be coded
on several bytes."
/Hans
On 11/03/2016 8:50 AM, Ahmed Aangour wrote:
Hi,--
If you're using a unicode characterset then 1character = 1 byte. But
if you're using a multibyte characterset then a character can be coded
on several bytes.
You can check the character set of the database by querying
nls_database_parameters.
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