One more followup comment: CHAR is rather an archaic vestige, from a time when fixed-length vs variable-length might measurably improve performance somewhere, or removing the requirement to store a length with every instance might help with space requirements. There is really almost no anymore to ever use it for fixed length strings. There is *NO* good reason that I know of to ever use it for values which are not actually fixed-length, that is assuredly a mistake.
