What does N'text' really mean?

[zakman]

I have seen a few examples that use N'....'
and I have not been able to find a description
of this in Books Online.

Some people say its for encryption, others say
it is used for unicode translation, or is it
something else?

Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[tlbroadbent]

SQL 2000 BOL contains the following infomation under the topic "Constants."

Unicode strings

Unicode strings have a format similar to character strings but are preceded by an N identifier (N stands for National Language in the SQL-92 standard). The N prefix must be uppercase. For example, 'Michél' is a character constant while N'Michél' is a Unicode constant. Terry L. Broadbent - DBA
Computing Links:

http://tlbroadbent.home.attbi.com/prog.htm

faq183-874 contains "Suggestions for Getting Quick and Appropriate Answers" to your questions.

 

[chiph]

Also -

You should use the N prefix when refering to a value for a column whose type is nchar or nvarchar. As in:

UPDATE tbl_Customer 
  SET LastName = N'Jones'
WHERE CustomerID = 23

Chip H.