On Thursday, October 16, 2025, Sergei Katkovsky <
skatkovsky@gmail.com> wrote:
Manual addition is not padding, If it were, then VARCHAR would also be
"blank-padded", because you can manually add trailing blanks to values
of this type too. But of course it isn't.
The spaces added to the end of a bpchar manually can and are considered “padding” - or “present but lack semantic/value significance”. The reason they are not padding for varchar is that such spaces are considered part of the stored value from a semantic perspective.
Think of padding as a noun, not a verb. “The value contains padding”. Not, “ I am padding the value”.
And yes, this is intended as a way to make the name of the type and its behavior consistent. You sorta have to want it to work/make sense; not fight it on minor nuance.
David J.
