- instring = VARCHAR or CLOB
- in_encoding = VARCHAR(64)
The character sets of two input parameters to TO_BYTES can be either Latin or Unicode.
If in_encoding is not one of the supported encodings, an error is returned.
If either instring or in_encoding is NULL, the result is NULL.
You can also pass arguments with data types that can be converted to these data types using the implicit data type conversion rules that apply to UDFs.
The maximum input or output for CLOB or BLOB size is 2 GB. An error is reported if the size is exceeded.
The TO_BYTES function converts from a character string to a VARBYTE. The character strings are treated as positive unless there is an explicit negative sign. Byte strings are interpreted as negative if the high order bit is 1.
TO_BYTES should not be used for byte to byte encodings, since TO_BYTES tries to interpret the sign of the byte string.
If you must use byte to byte conversion, use the two TO_BYTE functions. (Note the syntax is TO_BYTE, not TO_BYTES.)