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Hive truncating char datatype when converting to string

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Expert Contributor

I have noticed an issue in Hive 1.2 where char data is rtrimmed when converted to string. This doesn't occur when converting varchar to string. Is this a bug? or a feature?

select length(cast('abc    ' as char(10))), 
	   length(cast('abc    ' as varchar(10))),
	   length(cast('abc    ' as string));


_c0,_c1,_c2
3,7,7


In the above example I would expect the length of the char field to be 10.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

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Expert Contributor

It appears that this is expected behavior.

I discovered a jira pertaining to it here: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HIVE-13865

View solution in original post

3 REPLIES 3

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Expert Contributor

@Benjamin Hopp

Looks like it's a bug, because the Char always fixed length. In this case you have declared it as char(10), even though you have only 3 chars assigned it to, it should not truncate the rest.

avatar
Expert Contributor

It appears that this is expected behavior.

I discovered a jira pertaining to it here: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HIVE-13865

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Expert Contributor

Good to know this.