# CHARACTER\_LENGTH

Returns the Unicode character length of the given string.

## Syntax

```sql
CHARACTER_LENGTH (str)
CHAR_LENGTH (str)

```

## Arguments

* str: any string or binary object.

## Return Type

Integer

## Examples

```sql
SELECT CHARACTER_LENGTH('olé'), LENGTH('olé');

```

```output

+--------------------------+----------------+
| CHARACTER_LENGTH('olé')  | LENGTH('olé')  |
+--------------------------+----------------+
|                        3 |              4 |
+--------------------------+----------------+

```

> **⚠️ Warning**: ## Implicit CollationWhen `character_set_server` is set to `utf8`, string literals with characters using 4-byte encoding are implicitly assigned binary collation and processed as a sequence of bytes rather than characters. This implicit conversion to binary collation causes string functions to return unexpected results. To avoid using implicit binary collation, either use explicit type casting or use database columns defined with the `utf8mb4` character set. For more information, refer to [Implicit Collation in Special Cases](https://docs.singlestore.com/db/v9.1/reference/sql-reference/character-encoding/special-cases.md).

***

Modified at: February 27, 2023

Source: [/db/v9.1/reference/sql-reference/string-functions/character-length/](https://docs.singlestore.com/db/v9.1/reference/sql-reference/string-functions/character-length/)

(An index of the documentation is available at /llms.txt)