# TEXT
## Syntax
```sql
TEXT[(M)] [CHARACTER SET charset_name] [COLLATE collation_name]
```
## Description
A `TEXT` column with a maximum length of 65,535 (2¹⁶ - 1) characters. The effective maximum length is less if the value contains multi-byte characters. Each `TEXT` value is stored using a two-byte length prefix that indicates the number of bytes in the value. If you need a bigger storage, consider using [MEDIUMTEXT](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/reference/data-types/string-data-types/mediumtext) instead.
An optional length `M` can be given for this type. If this is done, MariaDB creates the column as the smallest `TEXT` type large enough to hold values`M` characters long.
`BLOB` and `TEXT` columns can be assigned a [DEFAULT](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/server-usage/tables/create-table#default) value.
## Examples
### Trailing spaces:
```sql
CREATE TABLE strtest (d TEXT(10));
INSERT INTO strtest VALUES('Maria ');
SELECT d='Maria',d='Maria ' FROM strtest;
+-----------+--------------+
| d='Maria' | d='Maria ' |
+-----------+--------------+
| 1 | 1 |
+-----------+--------------+
SELECT d LIKE 'Maria',d LIKE 'Maria ' FROM strtest;
+----------------+-------------------+
| d LIKE 'Maria' | d LIKE 'Maria ' |
+----------------+-------------------+
| 0 | 1 |
+----------------+-------------------+
```
### Example of TEXT
```sql
CREATE TABLE text_example (
description VARCHAR(20),
example TEXT
) DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1; -- One byte per char makes the examples clearer
```
```sql
INSERT INTO text_example VALUES
('Normal foo', 'foo'),
('Trailing spaces foo', 'foo '),
('NULLed', NULL),
('Empty', ''),
('Maximum', RPAD('', 65535, 'x'));
```
```sql
SELECT description, LENGTH(example) AS length
FROM text_example;
```
```sql
+---------------------+--------+
| description | length |
+---------------------+--------+
| Normal foo | 3 |
| Trailing spaces foo | 9 |
| NULLed | NULL |
| Empty | 0 |
| Maximum | 65535 |
+---------------------+--------+
```
### Data too Long
When `SQL_MODE` is strict (the default) a value is considered "too long" when its length exceeds the size of the data type, and an error is generated.
Example of data too long behavior for `TEXT`:
```sql
TRUNCATE text_example;
INSERT INTO text_example VALUES
('Overflow', RPAD('', 65536, 'x'));
```
```sql
ERROR 1406 (22001): Data too long for column 'example' at row 1
```
## Indexing
A [unique index](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/mariadb-quickstart-guides/mariadb-indexes-guide#unique-index) can be created on a `TEXT` column.
Internally, this uses hash indexing to quickly check the values and if a hash collision is found, the actual stored values are compared in order to retain the uniqueness.
## Difference between VARCHAR and TEXT
* [VARCHAR](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/reference/data-types/string-data-types/varchar) columns can be fully indexed. `TEXT` columns can only be indexed over a specified length.
* Using `TEXT` or [BLOB](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/reference/data-types/string-data-types/blob) in a [SELECT](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/reference/sql-statements/data-manipulation/selecting-data/select) query that uses temporary tables for storing intermediate results will force the temporary table to be disk based (using the [Aria storage engine](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/server-usage/storage-engines/aria/aria-storage-engine) instead of the [memory storage engine](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/server-usage/storage-engines/memory-storage-engine), which is a bit slower. This is not that bad as the [Aria storage engine](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/server-usage/storage-engines/aria/aria-storage-engine) caches the rows in memory. To get the benefit of this, one should ensure that the [aria\_pagecache\_buffer\_size](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/server-usage/storage-engines/aria/aria-system-variables#aria_pagecache_buffer_size) variable is big enough to hold most of the row and index data for temporary tables.
### For Storage Engine Developers
* Internally the full length of the [VARCHAR](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/reference/data-types/string-data-types/varchar) column is allocated inside each TABLE objects record\[] structure. As there are three such buffers, each open table will allocate 3 times max-length-to-store-varchar bytes of memory.
* `TEXT` and `BLOB` columns are stored with a pointer (4 or 8 bytes) + a 1-4 bytes length. The `TEXT` data is only stored once. This means that internally `TEXT` uses less memory for each open table but instead has the additional overhead that each `TEXT` object needs to be allocated and freed for each row access (with some caching in between).
## See Also
* [BLOB and TEXT Data Types](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/reference/data-types/string-data-types/blob-and-text-data-types)
* [MEDIUMTEXT](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/reference/data-types/string-data-types/mediumtext)
* [Data Type Storage Requirements](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/reference/data-types/data-type-storage-requirements)
*This page is licensed: GPLv2, originally from* [*fill\_help\_tables.sql*](https://github.com/MariaDB/server/blob/main/scripts/fill_help_tables.sql)
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