Calculating the size of a Long column

I've a largish table (24 GB) with a long column. I'd like to convert it to a varchar2 (easier to use than a CLOB) as I believe that the data stored in the long isn't actually very long.

However I don't know of an easy way (I could use Perl/Python/PLSQL etc and select the col in every row and do a length of the resulting strings) to calculate the max size for the long col given I can't use vsize 'cos it's a long of course. Any ideas?

BTW it's 8.1.7 on HP

Thanks,

Chris Dunscombe

www.christallize.com

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