title: Difference between text and varchar (character varying)
body: <p>What's the difference between the <code>text</code> data type and the <code>character varying</code> (<code>varchar</code>) data types?</p>
  
  <p>According to <a href="http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/interactive/datatype-character.html" rel="noreferrer">the documentation</a></p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>If character varying is used without length specifier, the type accepts strings of any size. The latter is a PostgreSQL extension.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>and</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>In addition, PostgreSQL provides the text type, which stores strings of any length. Although the type text is not in the SQL standard, several other SQL database management systems have it as well.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>So what's the difference?</p>