Determining the length of strings

Determining the number of characters in a string is something that you will use frequently when working with data in a SQL database. Many situations will require you to find the length of a string stored in your database. For example, you may need to limit the number of characters that are displayed in an application or you may need to ensure that a column in your dataset contains values that are all the same length. In this example, we are going to determine the length of the description column in the film table of the DVD Rental database.

This exercise is part of the course

Functions for Manipulating Data in PostgreSQL

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Exercise instructions

Select the title and description columns from the film table.
Find the number of characters in the description column with the alias desc_len.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

SELECT 
  -- Select the title and description columns
  ___,
  ___,
  -- Determine the length of the description column
  ___(___) AS ___
FROM film;

Edit and Run Code