SQL LEN() Function

Submitted by admin on Saturday, April 30, 2011 - 12:53.

The LEN function is useful to count the number of characters in a column you specified as the parameter. LEN is short for length. The LEN function returns the number of characters including spaces or any character within that column.

You can use SQL Alias to name the result of the LEN function.

SQL LEN() Syntax

SELECT LEN(column_name) FROM TABLE

Consider the following table for this exercise.

Users

Firstname	Lastname	Salary	DeptID
John	Smith	1000	1
Mathew	Simon	3000	1
Bill	Steve	2200	1
Amanda	Rogers	1800	2
Steve	Hills	2800	2
Steve	jobs	2400	2
bill	cosby	700	3

Example # 1

SELECT LEN(Firstname) AS Firstname_Length FROM users

Result of the Query

Firstname_Length
5
5
5
6
5
4
5

You can also add other column if you wish.

Example # 2

SELECT Firstname, Lastname, LEN(Firstname) AS Firstname_Length FROM users

Firstname	Lastname	Firstname_Length
John	Smith	5
Mathew	Simon	5
Bill	Steve	5
Amanda	Rogers	6
Steve	Hills	5
Steve	jobs	4
bill	cosby	5

SQL LEN() Function

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