POSITION function

Returns the location of the specified substring within a string.

See CHARINDEX function and STRPOS function for similar functions.

Syntax

POSITION(substring IN string )

Arguments

substring

The substring to search for within the string.

string

The string or column to be searched.

Return type

The POSITION function returns an integer corresponding to the position of the substring (one-based, not zero-based). The position is based on the number of characters, not bytes, so that multi-byte characters are counted as single characters.

Usage notes

POSITION returns 0 if the substring is not found within the string:

select position('dog' in 'fish');

position
----------
 0
(1 row)

Examples

The following example shows the position of the string fish within the word dogfish:

select position('fish' in 'dogfish');

position
----------
 4
(1 row)

The following example returns the number of sales transactions with a COMMISSION over 999.00 from the SALES table:

select distinct position('.' in commission), count (position('.' in commission))
from sales where position('.' in commission) > 4 group by position('.' in commission)
order by 1,2;

position | count
---------+-------
       5 |    629
(1 row)