Extracts a range of characters from a string.

Syntax

SUBSTRING(str, start, len)
SUBSTR(str, start, len)

Arguments

• str: any string or binary object
• start: the one-indexed position to start at. If negative, counts from the end.
• len: the number of characters to extract

Return Type

String

Remarks

• In SUBSTR or SUBSTRING, the starting index point of a string is 1 (not 0).

Examples

In the following example, the starting index 3 represents the third character in the string, because the index starts from 1.

SELECT SUBSTRING('1234567890', 3, 3);
****
+-------------------------------+
| SUBSTRING('1234567890', 3, 3) |
+-------------------------------+
| 345                           |
+-------------------------------+

In the following example, the substring is returned from the end, because the starting index is a negative number.

SELECT SUBSTRING('1234567890', -3, 3);
****
+--------------------------------+
| SUBSTRING('1234567890', -3, 3) |
+--------------------------------+
| 890                            |
+--------------------------------+

Related Topics

• SUBSTRING_INDEX

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