Are white space strings the same as empty strings in SQL?

Question

I am working in SQL Server 2008. Previously, I thought empty strings (i.e., '') were different than strings of just white space characters (e.g., ' '). Also, I thought that white space strings of different lengths were different from each other (e.g., ' ' vs. ' '). However, it seems that SQL treats all of these the same. That is, empty strings are the same as white space strings of any length. Is this expected?

possible duplicate of [SQL Server 2008 Empty String vs. Space](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1399844/sql-server-2008-empty-string-vs-space) — manlio, Nov 25 '14 at 14:44

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 25 '14 at 14:43

It's not white space in the conventional sense of any invisible character that affects spacing (such as tab, newline, etc) - it's only the literal space character (ASCII 32)

And it's standard SQL - if two strings are of unequal length, the shorter string is padded with spaces before comparisons occur.

Are white space strings the same as empty strings in SQL?

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