CHAR data type - Mailing list pgsql-general

I am using PostgreSQL 8.2.3. with the default page size of 8K

I created the following table:

CREATE TABLE mystate( ID integer, name char(8000) );

I inserted three tuples:

INSERT INTO mystate VALUES (3, 'a3');

INSERT INTO mystate VALUES (5, 'a5');

INSERT INTO mystate VALUES (6, 'a6');

And then I ran the following query:

vacuum analyze mystate;          

select relpages, reltuples from pg_class where relname='mystate';

but the result was:

1                 3

If I use “char(8000)” instead of “varchar(8000)” why there is no padding and these three tuples are inside the same page?

Thanks in advance,

Leticia