CREATE TABLE with CHAR but get VARCHAR

[Randell D.]

Folks,

I'm using MySQL 3.23.56-Max and I have several CREATE TABLEs similar to the
following in structure (taken from my PHP script so ignore the double quotes
and periods)

"ID MEDIUMINT(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT," .
"publisherHash CHAR(32) NOT NULL," .
"articleHash CHAR(32) NOT NULL UNIQUE," .
"issueID MEDIUMINT(10) NOT NULL," .
"articletext TEXT NOT NULL," .

I have examined the structure of my tables AFTER the create using DESCRIBE
or EXPLAIN and found that my columns that were CHAR(32) have been changed to
VARCHAR(32).

Why should this happen? Since my columns will be MD5 hashes and always be
32characters in length CHAR would be better, true? If so, will the usage of
VARCHAR likely lead to being a performance problem in the future?

all help is much appreciated,
thanks
randelld