Size limit of character varying Postgresql

What is the size limit of various data types in postgresql? I saw somewhere that for character varying(n), varchar(n) n must be between 1 to 10485760. Is that true?

What are the valid sizes for character(n), char(n) and text?

The maximum size of limited character types (e.g. varchar(n)) in Postgres is 10485760. You can check this in that way:

create table test(id serial primary key, str varchar(10485761));

ERROR:  length for type varchar cannot exceed 10485760

The limit is defined in the following fragment of source code (htup_details.h), however is not explicitly mentioned in the official documentation:

/*
 * MaxAttrSize is a somewhat arbitrary upper limit on the declared size of
 * data fields of char(n) and similar types.  It need not have anything
 * directly to do with the *actual* upper limit of varlena values, which
 * is currently 1Gb (see TOAST structures in postgres.h).  I've set it
 * at 10Mb which seems like a reasonable number --- tgl 8/6/00.
 */
#define MaxAttrSize     (10 * 1024 * 1024)

The maximum number of characters for variable unlimited length types (text, varchar) is undefined. There is a limit of size in bytes for all string types:


In any case, the longest possible character string that can be stored is about 1 GB.

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#189876, answer score: 66