MySQL Cookbook

Preserving Trailing Spaces in String Columns

Problem

MySQL strips trailing spaces from strings, but you want to preserve them.

Solution

Use a different column type.

Discussion

If you store a string that contains trailing spaces into the database, you may find that they’re gone when you retrieve the value. This is the normal MySQL behavior for CHAR and VARCHAR columns; the server returns values from both types of columns without trailing spaces. If you want to preserve trailing spaces, use one of the TEXT or BLOB column types. (The TEXT types are not case sensitive, the BLOB types are.) The following example illustrates the difference in behavior for VARCHAR and TEXT columns:

mysql> CREATE TABLE t (c VARCHAR(255));
mysql> INSERT INTO t (c) VALUES('abc       ');
mysql> SELECT c, LENGTH(c) FROM t;
+------+-----------+
| c    | LENGTH(c) |
+------+-----------+
| abc  |         3 |
+------+-----------+
mysql> DROP TABLE t;
mysql> CREATE TABLE t (c TEXT);
mysql> INSERT INTO t (c) VALUES('abc       ');
mysql> SELECT c, LENGTH(c) FROM t;
+------------+-----------+
| c          | LENGTH(c) |
+------------+-----------+
| abc        |        10 |
+------------+-----------+

There are plans to introduce a VARCHAR type that retains trailing spaces in a future version of MySQL.