types - MySQL char vs. int

Question

I'm currently having a discussion in my class about the datatypes char and int in MySQL. We have a phone number of 8 individual numbers. However, we can't find any pros and cons for each of them.

Should we use the char type or the int type, and why?

Answer 1

If you have a fixed size then you can use char(8) -> 8B , mysql works much faster with fixed size fields, but if you chose int -> 4B you will save space and also if you will have a index on that field it will work faster then the char.

You can do a simple benchmark to test the speed of writes and reads using char(8) and int

There is no point in using variable length type like varchar or varbinary if you have a fixed size because performance will decrease