Types in MySQL: BigInt(20) vs Int(20)

I was wondering what the difference between BigInt, MediumInt, and Int are... it would seem obvious that they would allow for larger numbers; however, I can make an Int(20) or a BigInt(20) and that would make seem that it is not necessarily about size.

Some insight would be awesome, just kind of curious. I have been using MySQL for a while and trying to apply business needs when choosing types, but I never understood this aspect.

Solution 1:

See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/numeric-types.html

• INT is a four-byte signed integer.

• BIGINT is an eight-byte signed integer.

They each accept no more and no fewer values than can be stored in their respective number of bytes. That means 2³² values in an INT and 2⁶⁴ values in a BIGINT.

The 20 in INT(20) and BIGINT(20) means almost nothing. It's a hint for display width. It has nothing to do with storage, nor the range of values that column will accept.

Practically, it affects only the ZEROFILL option:

CREATE TABLE foo ( bar INT(20) ZEROFILL );
INSERT INTO foo (bar) VALUES (1234);
SELECT bar from foo;

+----------------------+
| bar                  |
+----------------------+
| 00000000000000001234 |
+----------------------+

It's a common source of confusion for MySQL users to see INT(20) and assume it's a size limit, something analogous to CHAR(20). This is not the case.

Solution 2:

The number in parentheses in a type declaration is display width, which is unrelated to the range of values that can be stored in a data type. Just because you can declare Int(20) does not mean you can store values up to 10^20 in it:

[...] This optional display width may be used by applications to display integer values having a width less than the width specified for the column by left-padding them with spaces. ...

The display width does not constrain the range of values that can be stored in the column, nor the number of digits that are displayed for values having a width exceeding that specified for the column. For example, a column specified as SMALLINT(3) has the usual SMALLINT range of -32768 to 32767, and values outside the range allowed by three characters are displayed using more than three characters.

For a list of the maximum and minimum values that can be stored in each MySQL datatype, see here.

Solution 3:

Quote:

The "BIGINT(20)" specification isn't a digit limit. It just means that when the data is displayed, if it uses less than 20 digits it will be left-padded with zeros. 2^64 is the hard limit for the BIGINT type, and has 20 digits itself, hence BIGINT(20) just means everything less than 10^20 will be left-padded with spaces on display.