VARCHARC and VARRAWC

The VARCHARC data type has a character count field followed by character data. The value in the count field is either the number of bytes in the field or the number of characters. See "STRING SIZES ARE IN" for information about how to specify whether the count is interpreted as a count of characters or count of bytes. The optional length_of_length is either the number of bytes or the number of characters in the count field for VARCHARC, depending on whether lengths are being interpreted as characters or bytes.

The maximum value for length_of_lengths for VARCHARC is 10 if string sizes are in characters, and 20 if string sizes are in bytes. The default value for length_of_length is 5.

The VARRAWC data type has a character count field followed by binary data. The value in the count field is the number of bytes of binary data. The length_of_length is the number of bytes in the count field.

The max_len field is used to indicate the largest size of any instance of the field in the data file. For VARRAWC fields, max_len is number of bytes. For VARCHARC fields, max_len is either number of characters or number of bytes depending on the STRING SIZES ARE IN clause.

The following example shows various uses of VARCHARC and VARRAWC. The length of the picture field is 0, which means the field is set to NULL.

CREATE TABLE emp_load
             (first_name CHAR(15),
              last_name CHAR(20),
              resume CHAR(2000),
              picture RAW (2000))
  ORGANIZATION EXTERNAL
  (TYPE ORACLE_LOADER
    DEFAULT DIRECTORY ext_tab_dir
    ACCESS PARAMETERS
      (FIELDS (first_name VARCHARC(5,12),
               last_name VARCHARC(2,20),
               resume VARCHARC(4,10000),
               picture VARRAWC(4,100000)))
  LOCATION ('info.dat'));

00007William05Ricca0035Resume for William Ricca is missing0000