Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> writes:
> On Thu, Sep 01, 2005 at 08:50:27AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>> varchar could do something like using 24 bits for the length
>> and 8 bits for an encoded indication of the charset.
> With the unfortunate effect that strings are limited to 16Mb instead of
> 1Gb.
No, only that you can't declare a specific maxlength for a varchar that
exceeds 16Mb ... and guess what, there is already a smaller limit than
that, on the grounds that if a user writes varchar(1000000000) he needs
a cluebat anyway. I think you might have momentarily confused typmod
with the varlena length word of an individual value.
regards, tom lane