A question about field types: v_string vs v_wstring

[daniel_mmi]

First of all, let me just say that support for variable-width strings is on my '10 Things I Love about Alteryx'. Having just escaped from a FoxPro environment, I love the intuitive ways Alteryx deals with field sizes.

One wonkish question, though: what's the difference between v_string and v_wstring fields? Clearly the 'w' stands for 'wide', so there's probably a degree of optimization, but is there a max size for v_string fields, or something like that?

Thanks,

-D

[RodL]

Daniel,

Alteryx had a pretty good documentation in Help.

For that question, try...

http://help.alteryx.com/10.0/index.htm#Reference/DataFieldType.htm?Highlight=data types

I think it will cover most of what you are looking for.

Rod

[daniel_mmi]

The only difference I see seems to refer to support for unicode characters. Is that it?

V_String: "If the string greater than 16 characters and varies in length from value to value."

V_WString:  "If the string greater than 16 characters and varies in length from value to value. If the string contains unicode and is longer than 16 characters, use V_WString, such as a "Notes" or "Address" field."

[RodL]

I believe that's the difference...since with String and WString, they both have limits of 8192 characters. You use the WString if containing Unicode.

[MacRo · Accepted solution]

Since V_WStrings support unicode, they require more bytes per character than V_Strings, so if you know that the data doesn't contain unicode characters, my understanding is that you should see a bit better/faster performance by using V_String instead.

[rohangadre]

Hi @RodL,@MacRo

Is there a way to auto-convert 'V_String' types to 'V_WString' type? I'm using 'Auto-Field' tool which enforces Text types as 'V_String' & this is resulting in loss of few special characters.

A possible solution is to use 'yxft' files (as suggested here) but this adds external dependency.

Thanks!

-Rohan

[Atabarezz]