An ABL application can define character data by using either a CHARACTER or LONGCHAR variable. A CHARACTER variable can hold values as character strings up to 32K. If you need to store a character string that is greater than 32K, you use the LONGCHAR data type.

You can also use a LONGCHAR variable if you want a character string in a specific code page that is not the same as the internal code page (cpinternal). For more information about code pages, see Code pages.

A LONGCHAR field cannot be defined in an OpenEdge database table or temp-table. You use the Character Large Object (CLOB) data type for large strings in a database field. You can transfer a CLOB field from the database to a LONGCHAR field so that it can be manipulated or viewed with ABL code.