VARLEN field... what good are they?

["Stone, Brad V (TC)" <bvstone@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was playing around with the VARLEN keyfield today.  I have a field in a
file that can be a max of 31000 bytes.  I thought "hey, the VARLEN field
will save some space."

This field contains text, and the length is varying.  No telling what will
go in there.

Anyhow, I changed the DDS.  The file size actually grew about 3k after the
change.  

So, my question is, what good does the VARLEN keyword do in a case where I
have a field that could be anywhere from 1byte to 31k?  Is this just not the
best place for it?

Bradley V. Stone
Taylor Corporation - OASIS Programmer/Analyst   
bvstone@taylorcorp.com


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