CHARACTER_LENGTH is the ANSI form of the Teradata CHARACTERS function. Use CHARACTER_LENGTH instead of CHARACTERS for ANSI SQL:2011 conformance.
Use CHARACTER_LENGTH in place of MCHARACTERS. (MCHARACTERS is no longer documented because its use is deprecated and its support ends when KANJI1 support ends.)
To suppress trailing pad characters from the character count for a data value, use the TRIM function on the argument to CHARACTER_LENGTH. For example:
SELECT CHARACTER_LENGTH( TRIM( TRAILING FROM Name ) ) FROM Employee;