SQL - CHARINDEX() Function

---

---

The SQL CHARINDEX() function searches for a substring within a string starting at the specified location and returns the position of the substring found. If the substring was not found this function returns 0. It accepts three parameters, substring, string(The string to be searched), start(It is an optional parameter) The position where the search will start.

The substring we search for, should not have more than 8000 characters. SQL provides various string types namely, CHAR, VARCHAR, BINARY, VARBINARY, BLOB, TEXT, ENUM, and SET. Using the string functions in SQL we can manipulate the string values.

Syntax

Following is the syntax of the SQL CHARINDEX() function −

CHARINDEX(substring, string, start)

Parameters

Here, CHARINDEX() Function accepts three parameters −

• substring − The substring to search for, It has the limit of 8000 characters.

• string − The string to be searched.

• start − It is an optional parameter. The position where the search will start (if you do not want to start at the beginning of string). The first position in string is 1.

Return value

This function returns the position of a substring within the given string, If the substring is not found in the string, the function returns 0.

Example

Following is an example to Search a character using the CHARINDEX() function.

SELECT CHARINDEX('s', 'Tutorialspoint') As charindex;

Output

On executing the above statement it produces the following output −

+-----------+
| charindex |
+-----------+
|     9     |
+-----------+

Example

Following is an example to Search a substring using the CHARINDEX() function.

SELECT CHARINDEX('educate', 'Tutorialspoint is an online educate company') 
As charindex ;

Output

On executing the above statement it produces the following output −

+-----------+
| charindex |
+-----------+
|    29     |
+-----------+

Example

Following is an example to search a substring where it does not match with the given string.

SELECT CHARINDEX('learning', 'Tutorialspoint is an online educate company') 
As charindex ;

Output

On executing the above statement it produces the following output −

+-----------+
| charindex |
+-----------+
|    0      |
+-----------+

Example

Following is an example to pass the starting_position as the parameter in CHARINDEX() function.

SELECT CHARINDEX('educate', 'Tutorialspoint is an online educate company', 14) 
As charindex ;

Output

On executing the above statement it produces the following output −

+-----------+
| charindex |
+-----------+
|    29     |
+-----------+

Example

You can pass the table column as an argument to the CHARINDEX() function to search for a character in a particular column. Assume we have created a table with the name Customers using the CREATE statement as follows −

create table CUSTOMERS(
   ID INT NOT NULL, 
   NAME VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL, 
   AGE INT NOT NULL, 
   ADDRESS CHAR(25), 
   SALARY DECIMAL(10, 4), PRIMARY KEY(ID)
);

Now let's insert seven records into the customers table using the INSERT statement as follows:−

insert INTO CUSTOMERS(ID, NAME, AGE, ADDRESS, SALARY) VALUES(1, 'Ramesh', 32, 'Ahmedabad', 2000.00);
insert INTO CUSTOMERS(ID, NAME, AGE, ADDRESS, SALARY) VALUES(2, 'Khilan', 25, 'Delhi', 1500.00);
insert INTO CUSTOMERS(ID, NAME, AGE, ADDRESS, SALARY) VALUES(3, 'kaushik', 23, 'Kota', 2000.00);
insert INTO CUSTOMERS(ID, NAME, AGE, ADDRESS, SALARY) VALUES(4, 'Chaitali', 25, 'Mumbai', 6500.00);
insert INTO CUSTOMERS(ID, NAME, AGE, ADDRESS, SALARY) VALUES(5, 'Hardik', 27, 'Bhopal', 8500.00);
insert INTO CUSTOMERS(ID, NAME, AGE, ADDRESS, SALARY) VALUES(6, 'Komal', 22, 'MP', 4500.00);
insert INTO CUSTOMERS(ID, NAME, AGE, ADDRESS, SALARY) VALUES(7, 'Muffy', 24, 'Indore', 10000.00);

The following SELECT query uses the CHARINDEX() function to search for the character "a" in the NAME column of the CUSTOMERS table.

SELECT NAME, CHARINDEX('a', NAME) AS CHAR_INDEX FROM CUSTOMERS;  

Output

Following is the output of the above query −

+---------+---------------+
|   NAME  |  CHAR_INDEX   |
+---------+---------------+               
|  Ramesh |      2        |
|  Khilan |      5        |
|  kaushik|      2        |
| Chaitali|      3        |
|  Hardik |      2        |
|  Komal  |      4        |
|  Muffy  |      0        |
+---------+---------------+