Character strings are fixed‑length strings that can contain any printing or non‑printing character, and the null character ('\0'). For example, if you enter ABC into a character(5) column, five bytes will be stored, as follows:

Leading and embedded blanks are significant when comparing character strings. For example, OpenSQL considers the following character strings to be different:

When selecting character strings using the underscore ( _ ) wildcard character of the like predicate, any trailing blanks you want to match must be included. For example, to select the following character string:

the wildcard specification must also contain trailing blanks:

Length is not significant when comparing character strings. The shorter string is (logically) padded to the length of the longer. For example, OpenSQL considers the following character strings equal:

Char is a synonym for character.