Re: [INTERFACES] retrieving varchar size

Byron Nikolaidis wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I was wondering if it would be possible, in the Postgres backend, to
> send back the defined column size for the varchar data type (and
> possibly the char() type, i.e., bpchar) on a query?  Currently, it just
> sends back -1 for the size, which makes it difficult in the frontend
> (i.e., odbc driver) to determine what the size of the column is.

While the right solution to this is of course getting the size from
backend, there exists a workaround now (assuming that the query is not
too expensive). While ASCII cursors always hide the varchar sizes,
binary ones return the size in actual data (by zero-padding the
returned data to max size), so one can determine the actual max
sizes by opening the query in binary cursor and then examining
enough records to get one non-null field for each varchar field.

Hannu