How to return varchar value from a function

Question

I written the following function.

SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
Create FUNCTION NameFunction
(
    @eid int
)
RETURNS varchar
AS
BEGIN
            


        

Answer 1

RETURNS varchar should be RETURNS varchar(50).

varchar without a length specified is interpreted as varchar(1) in this context (and as varchar(30) in the context of a CAST).

BTW: Scalar UDFs that do data access can be performance killers. You might want to consider at least rewriting this as an inline TVF so that the optimiser has more options.