Bit String Types
Bit strings are strings of 1's and 0's. They can be used to store or visualize bit masks. There are two SQL bit types: bit(`n`)
and bit varying(`n`)
, where n
is a positive integer.
bit
type data must match the length n
exactly; it is an error to attempt to store shorter or longer bit strings. bit varying
data is of variable length up to the maximum length n
; longer strings will be rejected. Writing bit
without a length is equivalent to bit(1)
, while bit varying
without a length specification means unlimited length.
bit(`n`)
, it will be truncated or zero-padded on the right to be exactly n
bits, without raising an error. Similarly, if one explicitly casts a bit-string value to bit varying(`n`)
, it will be truncated on the right if it is more than n
bits.Example Using the Bit String Types
CREATE TABLE test (a BIT(3), b BIT VARYING(5));
INSERT INTO test VALUES (B'101', B'00');
INSERT INTO test VALUES (B'10', B'101');
ERROR: bit string length 2 does not match type bit(3)
INSERT INTO test VALUES (B'10'::bit(3), B'101');
SELECT * FROM test;
a | b
-----+-----
101 | 00
100 | 101
A bit string value requires 1 byte for each group of 8 bits, plus 5 or 8 bytes overhead depending on the length of the string (but long values may be compressed or moved out-of-line, as explained in Section 7.2 for character strings).