FN-FORUM: MySQL data types and lengths

date posted 5th January 2007 18:03

Silly question alert..

Why is it bad to have a large MySQL field type if the data stored will
never fill it?

E.g. i had a field which i made as a varchar(200) thinking that it would
be enough. It turned out that it wasnt and a few values were cropped.
The client asked why i couldnt make them all as large fields (TEXT) , it
kind of threw me as i didn't really know why, i have just done it out of
habit.

I know there is a valid reason.. somewhere. Thoughts? :)