[AccessD] Field data type Binary and creation of specific field data type

On 4 Jun 2006 at 12:10, Gustav Brock wrote:

> Did you know that a Binary field type is available with a length of 510
> bytes? 
...
> 
> You might get the idea that it will hold strings of length beyond 255 chars
> but no, it will not. They will be truncated, 255 is still the maximum. It

Strings are store as Unicode and use two bytes each
510 bytes = 255 x 2 byte characters.

> mostly looks like a fixed length "Tiny OLE Object" as it seems to hold a
> fixed length byte array. So what's the purpose if this field type? Or how to
> use it in a way not offered by other data types? 

Looks as though it would be useful to store a user-defined type in a single 
field.

I'd guess that you could use StrConv(strMyString,vbFromUnicode ) and 
StrConv(strMyString,vbUnicode )  with a terminating Null  to store up to 
509 character strings in the field and still have ithem searchable/sortable 
- although it will probably only sort in ANSI order (case sensitive - all 
caps sorting before all lower case).

You could also use it to store up to 4080 bit flags per record. :-)

-- 
Stuart