SUBSTR

Description

The SUBSTR function is used to extract a substring of specified position and length from a string or binary data.

Syntax

SUBSTR(str, pos [, len])

or

SUBSTR(str FROM pos [FOR len])

Parameter Description

• str (string/binary): Input string or binary data.
• pos (bigint): Starting position of the substring. If pos is greater than or equal to 1, extraction starts from the pos-th character from the left; if pos is less than or equal to -1, extraction starts from the -pos-th character from the right; if pos is equal to 0, extraction starts from the first character on the left.
• len (bigint, optional): Length of the substring to extract. If not specified, the full substring starting from pos is returned.

Return Result

Returns the extracted substring, type is string.

Example

1. Extract 5 characters from the string "Hello, world!" starting from the second character:

SELECT SUBSTR('Hello, world!', 2, 5); -- Output result: ello,

2. Extract all characters from the fourth character onwards from the string "123456789":

SELECT SUBSTR('123456789', 4); -- Output result: 456789

3. Extract 1 character from the string "Database" starting from the second character, and specify the character set as UTF-8:

SELECT SUBSTR('Database' FROM 2 FOR 1 ); -- Output result: a

Notes

• If the value of pos or len exceeds the range of the input string, the function will return an empty string.
• When extracting a string, the units for pos and len are characters, not bytes.