CHAR / VARCHAR / Indexing

[wwwwizard]

Hi,

Does an index on a char column return results faster than an index on a varchar column?

thanks,
Jeff

[tomhath]

I am only guessing here, but I'd guess they're either the same or varchar might be faster. I recall reading somewhere that the trailing blanks are not stored in char fields, they're just stuffed back in when you access the data.

[ultraslacker]

mysql has some documentation on its mentioning performance benefits of static row lengths. Going to static rows may offset the increased i/o for isam and myisam type tables by allowing a row to be located very quickly. IMO, it is very specific to your data and would require benchmarking. Varchar is faster with innodb tables (the tables that support foreign keys and transactions).