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BIT_LENGTH()
Added in: 2.0
Changed in: 2.1
Description
Gives the length in bits of the input string. For multi-byte character sets, this may be less than the number of characters times 8 times the “formal” number of bytes per character as found in RDB$CHARACTER_SETS.
Note: With arguments of type CHAR, this function takes the entire formal string length (e.g. the declared length of a field or variable) into account. If you want to obtain the “logical” bit length, not counting the trailing spaces, right-TRIM the argument before passing it to BIT_LENGTH.
Result type: INTEGER
Syntax
BIT_LENGTH (str)
BLOB support: Since Firebird 2.1, this function fully supports text BLOBs of any length and character set.
Examples
select bit_length('Hello!') from rdb$database -- returns 48 select bit_length(_iso8859_1 'Grüß di!') from rdb$database -- returns 64: ü and ß take up one byte each in ISO8859_1 select bit_length (cast (_iso8859_1 'Grüß di!' as varchar(24) character set utf8)) from rdb$database -- returns 80: ü and ß take up two bytes each in UTF8 select bit_length (cast (_iso8859_1 'Grüß di!' as char(24) character set utf8)) from rdb$database -- returns 208: all 24 CHAR positions count, and two of them are 16-bit