double byte vs single byte characters

[NCD]

Do double byte, single byte characters matter when using Google Sheets as your source?

I'm creating an app for a Japanese company and got me thinking, do double byte characters take up more storage than single byte characters? 

And if I create a enum and column and prohibit people from creating existing values with an expression, would it considerＴＨＩＳ and THIS as the same value?

[SkrOYC]

Quite interesting question.

I'm gonna tag some people that might have experience with this.

@Koichi_Tsuji @takuya_miyai @Kirk_Masden 

[takuya_miyai]

Hi @NCD 

That is different by the datasource.
For example, Spreaedsheet is one character, the same for both single byte character and multi byte character.
However, SQL server is naturally different.

> And if I create a enum and column and prohibit people from creating existing values with an expression, would it considerＴＨＩＳ and THIS as the same value?

You will understand if you try it.

 

@SkrOYC , thank you for suggestion.🤙

[Joseph_Seddik]

Regarding this part:

« do double byte characters take up more storage than single byte characters? »

Negligible, both in terms of storage space and memory usage. As for storage, data will be highly compressed, as text data has naturally-high repetition rates. Regarding memory, each cell would be allocated a fixed-length register regardless of the length of its contents. 

[Kirk_Masden · Accepted solution]

I agree that it's an interesting question.  I found that when using the AppSheet search function, the two are considered to be identical:

But, as @takuya_miyai pointed out, if you make an expression like "ＴＨＩＳ"="THIS" it will be false.

It would be nice if we had the capability of converting such codes within AppSheet.  A text funtion like SINGLEBYTE() would be nice.  Then, SINGLEBYTE("ＴＨＩＳ")=SINGLEBYTE("THIS") would be true. 

I think there's a strong possibility that users in Japan will type in both double and single bytes so some way to work around such user behavior would be nice.

[NCD]

I found out that while "ＴＨＩＳ" and "THIS" are considered to be identical,

"コレ" and  "ｺﾚ" are considered as different 😞

[Kirk_Masden]

Thanks! Interesting.  I assume that you are referring to searching, right.  Still, it would be great to have tools to change one to the other.