Looks like StyleCI has had an error on its end. @GrahamCampbell?

I've retriggered the ci services.

Thanks @GrahamCampbell.

I think for fixed length column such as ip and mac char type is more efficient than varchar.

@salarmehr The IP address type is not fixed length, as the PostgreSQL type can take IPv4 or IPv6. IPv6 alone is definitely not fixed length, given the possibility of IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses.

There are several conventions pertaining to MAC addresses, thus causing the length to vary. Here are a few of those conventions pulled from the PostgreSQL documentation regarding the MAC address type:

'08:00:2b:01:02:03'
'08-00-2b-01-02-03'
'08002b:010203'
'08002b-010203'
'0800.2b01.0203'
'0800-2b01-0203'
'08002b010203'

The intention of this PR was to allow Laravel to use these two 'real' network types within PostgreSQL out of the box, while still providing a fully compatible fallback solution for other database systems.

The comment was for mysql. Regardless of their format, the length does not change dramatically.

Regardless of which database system your comment pertains to, Laravel should have a level playing field across all of them.

The length does indeed change dramatically, as the example, IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses, I mentioned above could require up to an additional 15 characters.

Example:

Full notation IPv6 Address:
2001:0db8:0a0b:12f0:0000:0000:0000:0001 (39 characters)

Compressed notation IPv6 Address:
2001:db8:a0b:12f0::1 (20 characters)

IPv4-mapped IPv6 Address:
0064:ff9b:0000:0000:0000:0000:183.152.86.120 (44 characters)

This is an epitomical use case for the varchar type. It fits the exact definition in that the character count will vary for this field. Using a fixed length char of 45 characters is wasteful (e.g., the IPv4 address 8.8.8.8 consumes 8 bytes as varchar). A varchar consumes number of characters + 1 bytes. A char would always consume the set length--45 bytes in this case.