VARCHAR
The VARCHAR datatype stores character strings of varying length. The first two bytes contain the length of the character string, and the remaining bytes contain the string. The specified length of the string in a bind or a define call must include the two length bytes, so the largest VARCHAR string that can be received or sent is 65533 bytes long, not 65535. For converting longer strings, use the LONG VARCHAR external datatype.
VARCHAR2
The VARCHAR2 datatype is a variable-length string of characters with a maximum length of 4000 bytes.