A graphic string is a sequence of two-byte characters. The length of the string is the number of its characters. Like character strings, graphic strings can be empty.
All values of a fixed-length graphic-string column have the same length, which is determined by the length attribute of the column. The length attribute must be between 1 through 16383 inclusive.
The types of varying-length graphic strings are:
The values of a column with any one of these string types can have different lengths. The length attribute of the column determines the maximum length a value can have.
For a VARGRAPHIC column, the length attribute must be between 1 through 16370 inclusive. For a DBCLOB column, the length attribute must be between 1 through 1 073 741 823 inclusive. For more information about DBCLOBs, see Large objects.
For the restrictions that apply to the use of long varying-length strings, see Limitations on use of strings.
Although fixed-length graphic-string variables cannot be defined in PL/I, COBOL/400(R), and RPG/400(R), a character-string variable will be treated like a fixed-length graphic-string variable if it was generated in the source from a GRAPHIC column in the external definition of a file.
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