Is it less efficient to use TEXT than varchar in an SQL database?
If so why?
If not why would you not just always use TEXT?
I'm not targetting a specific database here but oracle is probably the most relevant, although I'm testing on MySQL for the time being as part of a proof of concept.
PostgreSQL documentation says:
Tip: There are no performance differences between these three types, apart from increased storage size when using the blank-padded type, and a few extra cycles to check the length when storing into a length-constrained column. While character(n) has performance advantages in some other database systems, it has no such advantages in PostgreSQL. In most situations text or character varying should be used instead.