POSITION

Functions › Text › Find

Returns the position of the first occurrence of a substring, counting from 1, or 0 when it is not found. The standard SQL spelling of STRPOS.

Syntax

POSITION( <substring> IN <string> )

Arguments

Argument	Description
<substring>	The text to find. Matched exactly, with case.
<string>	The text to search.

Returns

An integer: the character position of the first match, or 0 when there is none. NULL when either argument is NULL.

Usage notes

• The engine reads it as STRPOS(<string>, <substring>), so the two behave the same, including where they run.
• Each side of IN is a value expression: a column, a literal, a function call or arithmetic, and || joins. It cannot hold a comparison.
• Only the IN form is accepted. With a comma, write STRPOS(<string>, <substring>), and note the order is reversed.

Examples

SELECT c.email, POSITION('@' IN c.email) AS at_sign FROM Customer c

email	at_sign
ana.ruiz@example.com	9
j.smith@example.com	8

SELECT t.key FROM Ticket t WHERE POSITION('refund' IN LOWER(t.title)) > 0

key
T-41

Not supported

Refused	Write instead
POSITION(<substring>, <string>)	STRPOS(<string>, <substring>) or POSITION(<substring> IN <string>)

-- Refused by the engine
SELECT POSITION('@', c.email) FROM Customer c

See also

STRPOS · SUBSTRING · SPLIT_PART