• *grouping_word Function
• *grouping_word_inside Function
• a5_csweb_to_list Function
• a5_extractoddata Function
• a5_get_pos_linestart Function
• a5_modeless_textencoder Function
• expandtablefiletypes Function
• EXTRACT_STRING Function
• getstringfromfile Function
• LASTWORD Function
• LEADING Function
• LEFT Function
• left_u Function
• rat_u Function
• regex_literal_extract Function
• regex_literal_mask_get Function
• right_u Function
• SUBSTR Function
• substr_u Function
• TRAILING Function
• WORD2 Function
• WORD_IN_COMMON Function
• WORD_IN_COMMON_C Function
• WORD_UNIQUE Function
• WORD_UNIQUE_C Function

SUBSTR Function

Syntax

Arguments

character

A character string.

starting_position

The character position that begins the Substring. Numeric

number_of_characters

Optional. Default = All. The number of characters to include in the Substring. Numeric

Description

Returns a substring portion of a character string.

Discussion

SUBSTR() returns a Substring of a Input_String. The Substring begins at the specified Starting_Position and continues for the specified Number_Of_Characters. If you omit the Number_Of_Characters parameter, SUBSTR() returns the right portion of the Input_String beginning at the Starting_Position. NOTE: To determine whether one string is a substring of another, use either the $? (substring) operator or the LIKE()function.

Example

substr(FIRSTNAME, 1, 3) -> "Bev", if FIRSTNAME contains "Beverly"
substr(FIRSTNAME, 5, 3) -> "rly"

Assume that you want to search your table for all the zip codes that start with "021." You can do this by defining the following filter expression:

substr(ZIP, 1, 3) = "021"

Index keys are limited to 100 characters. If you want to perform a complex ordering on multiple fields, you sometimes may exceed the key length limit if you simply concatenate fields to create the index expression. For example, the following expression includes four fields that are each 30 characters wide and results in a key that is too long:

COMPANY + DEPARTMENT + LASTNAME + FIRSTNAME

You can still achieve the correct order (in most cases) by using the following index expression:

trim(COMPANY) + substr(DEPARTMENT, 1, 15) + substr(LASTNAME, 1, 15) + substr(FIRSTNAME, 1, 10)

Note : This index expression does not work as expected if, for example, two different DEPARTMENTs within the same COMPANY have the same first 15 characters in their name.

See Also

• Character Extraction Functions