public int getCharacterLength() {
    if (charLength != -1) {
      return charLength;
    }
    charLength = HiveStringUtils.getTextUtfLength(getStrippedValue());
    return charLength;
  }
HiveCharWritable.
String values will be padded to full char length.
Character length, comparison, hashCode should ignore trailing spaces.
serde/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hive/serde2/io/HiveCharWritable.java