Question

Which mode does not remove trailing spaces when CHAR values are retrieved?

(a) PAD_CHAR_TO_FULL_LENGTH

(b) TO_FULL_LENGTH_CHAR_PAD

(c) CHAR_PAD_TO_FULL_LENGTH

(d) PAD_CHAR_TO_LENGTH

I got this question during an interview for a job.

This intriguing question comes from String Data Types topic in portion Data Type Reference, Operators and Functions of MySQL

Answer 1

Right choice is (a) PAD_CHAR_TO_FULL_LENGTH

For explanation: When the CHAR values are stored, they are right-padded with spaces to the specified length. When CHAR values are retrieved, trailing spaces are removed unless the SQL mode ‘PAD_CHAR_TO_FULL_LENGTH’ is enabled.