MySQL - TEXT vs CHAR and VARCHAR

Question

Reading this question, a doubt popped into my head:

• char and varchar can store up to 255 chars
• text can store up to 65k chars
• char size in bytes is number of chars
• varchar size in bytes is number of chars used + 1

So how much bytes does TEXT actually occupy? ~65KB or number of chars used + 1?

Solution 1

TEXT is a variable length datatype, with a maximum of 65,000 characters.

LONGTEXT can be used for over 4 trillion characters.

To answer your question: it's a variable lenght, and it will only occupy the amount of characters you store.

Solution 2

TEXT occupies a number actual length of your data + 2 bytes.

Comments

[Anon.]

Plus a little bit of overhead to indicate that length - and LONGTEXT has more overhead than TEXT has more overhead than VARCHAR.

[Pindatjuh]

True: "LONG" in "LONGTEXT" actually indicates how much characters. A long value is 8 bytes, so the overhead is 8 bytes. Though it's insignificant, thus I didn't mention it.

[Evan Carroll]

Logically, TEXT is also stored as a BLOB

[TommyAutoMagically]

Soooo if you're storing 256 or more characters, VARCHAR and TEXT take up the same amount of storage space?