Is there a difference in using INT(1) vs TINYINT(1) in MySQL?

Question

I\'m under the assumption that INT(1) is the exact same thing as TINYINT(1) but I really have no idea. Whenever I\'ve had values that can only be a single integer (e.g. a va

Answer 1

Here you'll understand it in a better way!

tinyint: 1 byte, -128 to +127 / 0 to 255 (unsigned)
smallint: 2 bytes, -32,768 to +32,767 / 0 to 65,535 (unsigned)
mediumint: 3 bytes, -8,388,608 to 8,388,607 / 0 to 16,777,215 (unsigned)
int/integer: 4 bytes, -2,147,483,648 to +2,147,483,647 / 0 to 4,294,967,295 (unsigned)
bigint: 8 bytes, -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 / 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (unsigned)

Answer 2

The number in parentheses for integer column types is the "display width". This does not effect the storage requirements as they are pre-defined.

Further reading

• http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/data-types.html
• http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/numeric-types.html

Answer 3

To summarize the accepted answered :

The number in parentheses indicates the *number of characters to display that field*, **not** the storage size of the field.

But if you want to know the storage size, you should check the MySQL source documents.

Source: MySQL Docs: Integer Types (Exact Value) - INTEGER, INT, SMALLINT, TINYINT, MEDIUMINT, BIGINT

Direct quote from source documentation :

TINYINT : 1 byte, -128 to 127 signed, 0 to 255 unsigned

SMALLINT : 2 bytes, -32768 to 32767 signed, 0 to 65535 unsigned

MEDIUMINT : 3 bytes, -8388608 to 8388607 signed, 0 to 16777215 unsigned

INT : 4 bytes, -2147483648 to 2147483647 signed, 0 to 4294967295 unsigned

BIGINT : 8 bytes, -2^63 to 2^63-1 signed, 0 to 2^64-1 unsigned