SUBSTR

Description of the illustration substr.gif
The SUBSTR
functions return a portion ofchar
, beginning at character position
, substring_length
characters long.SUBSTR
calculates lengths using characters as defined by the input character set.SUBSTRB
uses bytes instead of characters. SUBSTRC
uses Unicode complete characters.SUBSTR2
uses UCS2 code points. SUBSTR4
uses UCS4 code points.
-
If
position
is 0, then it is treated as 1. -
If
position
is positive, then Oracle Database counts from the beginning ofchar
to find the first character. -
If
position
is negative, then Oracle counts backward from the end ofchar
. -
If
substring_length
is omitted, then Oracle returns all characters to the end ofchar
. Ifsubstring_length
is less than 1, then Oracle returns null.
char
can be any of the datatypesCHAR
, VARCHAR2
, NCHAR
, NVARCHAR2
,CLOB
, or NCLOB
. Both position
andsubstring_length
must be of datatypeNUMBER
, or any datatype that can be implicitly converted to NUMBER
, and must resolve to an integer. The return value is the same datatype aschar
. Floating-point numbers passed as arguments toSUBSTR
are automatically converted to integers.
See Also:
Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide for more information aboutSUBSTR
functions and length semantics in different localesThe following example returns several specified substrings of "ABCDEFG":
SELECT SUBSTR('ABCDEFG',3,4) "Substring"
FROM DUAL;
Substring
---------
CDEF
SELECT SUBSTR('ABCDEFG',-5,4) "Substring"
FROM DUAL;
Substring
---------
CDEF
Assume a double-byte database character set:
SELECT SUBSTRB('ABCDEFG',5,4.2) "Substring with bytes"
FROM DUAL;
Substring with bytes
--------------------
CD
From:http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14200/functions162.htm#SQLRF06114