SQLite length() function

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The SQLite length() function returns the number of characters of a string. If the argument is a BLOB, the length() function returns the number of bytes.

Syntax #

length(data)Copy

Arguments #

The length function accepts one argument which can be a string or a BLOB.

data

The string or a BLOB argument.

If data is NULL, the length function returns NULL. If data is not a text value, the length function will convert it to a text value first.

Return Type #

INTEGER

Examples #

1) Basic length() function example #

The following statement returns the number of characters in the SQLite string:

SELECT length('SQLite');Copy

Output:

length('SQLite')
----------------
6Copy

2) Using the length function with Unicode #

The following example uses the length() function with a string that contains Unicode characters:

SELECT length('Äpfel') length;Copy

Output:

length
------
5Copy

3) Using the length() function with table data #

We’ll use the albums table from the sample database:

The following query uses the length() function to get the lengths of the album titles and sort the titles by the title length in descending order:

SELECT
  title,
  length (title) 
FROM
  albums
ORDER BY
  length (title) DESC;Copy

Here’s the partial output:

The following example uses the length() function to find the album titles that have 10 characters:

SELECT title, length(title) AS title_length
FROM albums
WHERE length(title) = 10;Copy

Output:

Title       title_length
----------  ------------
Audioslave  10
Body Count  10
Bongo Fury  10
Angel Dust  10
One By One  10
Blue Moods  10
...Copy