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POSITION()
Added in: 2.1
Description
Returns the (1-based) position of the first occurrence of a substring in a host string. With the optional third argument, the search starts at a given offset, disregarding any matches that may occur earlier in the string. If no match is found, the result is 0.
Result type: INTEGER
Syntax
POSITION (<args>) <args> ::= substr IN string | substr, string [, startpos]
- The optional third argument is only supported in the second syntax (comma syntax).
- The empty string is considered a substring of every string. Therefore, if substr is ' ' (empty string) and string is not NULL, the result is:
- 1 if startpos is not given;
- startpos if startpos lies within string;
- 0 if startpos lies beyond the end of string.
Notice: A bug in Firebird 2.1–2.1.3 causes POSITION to always return 1 if substr is the empty string. This is fixed in 2.1.4.
- This function fully supports text BLOBs of any size and character set.
Examples
position ('be' in 'To be or not to be') -- returns 4 position ('be', 'To be or not to be') -- returns 4 position ('be', 'To be or not to be', 4) -- returns 4 position ('be', 'To be or not to be', 8) -- returns 17 position ('be', 'To be or not to be', 18) -- returns 0 position ('be' in 'Alas, poor Yorick!') -- returns 0
Warning: When used on a BLOB, this function may need to load the entire object into memory. This may affect performance if huge BLOBs are involved.