If you ever find yourself doing this as a programmer/software engineer, please reconsider (your career choice)
From: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/appdev.920/a96624/03_types.htm#29460
Note: Currently,
VARCHAR is synonymous with VARCHAR2. However, in future releases of PL/SQL, to accommodate emerging SQL standards, VARCHAR might become a separate datatype with different comparison semantics. So, it is a good idea to use VARCHAR2 rather than VARCHAR.Brilliant! Create a new type because maybe at some point you might want to change the behavior of an existing type at some unspecified time in a vaguely defined future. Apparently the guys at Oracle decided it made less sense to introduce a new type when the need arises (what sane people do) instead of adding a redundant type right away... just in case. Oh! And make the new type have the old behavior just to conveniently screw up backward compatibility if the original type does change. That's like making "Toy Story" the sequel to "Toy Story 2"... WTF
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