The LONGCHAR data type consists of character data that is not limited in size to 32K, but rather it is limited in size only by the system resources. With the LONGCHAR data type, you can apply much of the existing ABL character handling capabilities to strings larger than 32K bytes.

LONGCHAR is the program variable counterpart of the CLOB data type. The LONGCHAR data type has metadata associated with it to designate its code page and other information. The code page associated with LONGCHAR data defaults to -cpinternal. However, you can use the FIX-CODEPAGE statement, CODEPAGE–CONVERT function, and the COPY-LOB statement to create a LONGCHAR in any code page supported by the convmap.cp file. To use most of the character functions available in ABL, the LONGCHAR is converted to -cpinternal.