As we know that CHAR is used to store fixed length string and VARCHAR is used to store variable length strings. Hence we can store a fixed length as well as variable length string in the same table by declaring a column as CHAR and other as VARCHAR.
Example
mysql> Create Table Employees(FirstName CHAR(10), LastName VARCHAR(10)); Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.64 sec) mysql> Desc Employees; +-----------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra | +-----------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | FirstName | char(10) | YES | | NULL | | | LastName | varchar(10) | YES | | NULL | | +-----------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ 2 rows in set (0.03 sec)