Storage Sizes

[Genx]

Before i start... where are the descriptions for each forum section, i couldn't seem to find them when looking for somewhere to post this...Sorry if i posted this in the wrong place, you'd think i'd know by now eh Lee?

Anyway, here's my question, i want to know how much physical space a 30 character long text string in one record will take up on a computer.

Or in a larger scale example:

5 text fields, each roughly 30 character strings, 1,000,000 records.

Thanks

~Genx

[Lee Smith]

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Complex calculations, advanced scripting and other mind boggling topics.

Lee

[Genx]

Lol thanks lee, but um, where abouts would this fit?

Thanks again

~Genx

[Wim Decorte]

should be easy enough to test, no? Create an empty file. Check size. Add 30 characters to a text field, check size...

[Genx]

Hmmm... That wouldn't be all that accurate though would it? ahwell, ill do it and loop a duplication for about 10000 records and divide and get the average or something

Cheers for the suggestion Wim, though i am lazy i'll do it hehe

~Genx

[Genx]

Rightio for anyone who's interested i got approx 48 bytes (found by sample of 10,000 records and 5 fields of data each containing a string of 30 characters)

~Genx

[Wim Decorte]

IIRC fm stores each character as 2-byte unicode internally, which is why the 2GB text field limit will give you approx. 1 billion characters...

[Genx]

... well how did i manage to get less than 2-byte a character?

[Wim Decorte]

No idea. Something else to keep in mind: if your field is indexed (or can be indexed automatically) then the size it takes will grow beyond the physical data in the field. How much depends on what indexes are build for that field.

[comment]

Unicode uses (or better put, CAN use) variable length encoding.

[Genx]

rightio, thanks guys

[BruceJ]

If indexing is ON for a field but there is nothing in the field, does it still take up space?

[Fitch]

If indexing is ON for a field but there is nothing in the field, does it still take up space?

The Zen of FileMaker, very deep.

No, the field won't take up any space in the index. It will only affect the file size in the bytes it takes to define it in the schema.