Is there maximum size of string data type in Hive?

Question

Google a ton but haven\'t found it anywhere. Or does that mean Hive can support arbitrary large string data type as long as cluster is allowed? If so, where I can find what is t

Answer 1

The current documentation for Hive lists STRING as a valid datatype, distinct from VARCHAR and CHAR See official apache doc here: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/Hive/LanguageManual+Types#LanguageManualTypes-Strings

It wasn't immediately apparent to me that STRING was indeed it's own type, but if you scroll down you'll see several cases where it's used distinctly from the others.

While perhaps not authoritative, this page indicates the max length of a STRING is 2GB. http://www.folkstalk.com/2011/11/data-types-in-hive.html