Syntax
CHAR_LENGTH(str)
Purpose
You can call this function to return the number of characters in the str string.
A multi-byte character is counted as one character. For example, if you enter five two-byte characters, the LENGTH() function returns 10, while the CHAR_LENGTH() function returns 5.
Examples
obclient> SELECT CHAR_LENGTH('hi'), LENGTH('hi'),CHAR_LENGTH('hello');
+-------------------+--------------+----------------------+
| CHAR_LENGTH('hi') | LENGTH('hi') | CHAR_LENGTH('hello') |
+-------------------+--------------+----------------------+
| 2 | 2 | 5 |
+-------------------+--------------+----------------------+
1 row in set