this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2023
96 points (96.2% liked)

Today I learned

7844 readers
1 users here now

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
sonder@lemmy.ml
96
TIL that SQLite has only five data types (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 10 months ago by baitsmithy@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/todayilearned@lemmy.ml
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Learned this from a friend. The types are null, integer, real, text, and blob. My friend describes them thusly:

  • Null stores nothing, but like, actively nothing, as opposed to the absence of a thing.
  • Integer is a signed integer, up to 8 bytes.
  • Real is always an 8-byte float.
  • Text is an arbitrary-length UTF-8 or UTF-16.
  • Blob is an arbitrary-length anything-else. But I hope you remembered what you put there. Because it sure isn't gonna tell you. Oh, and it doesn't have strong typing, so if you ask for it back as an integer, it'll quite happily give you it back as an integer, especially if that doesn't make sense!
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

IMO this is fine. The whole point of sqlite is to be as lightweight as possible. It doesn't need the bloat introduced by any other types. Blobs + data serialization in the client library will be good enough for most other cases.