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MySQL | POSITION method

schedule Aug 12, 2023
Last updated
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MySQL
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MySQL's POSITION(~) method returns the position of the first occurrence of a substring in the source string.

Syntax

POSITION(substr IN str);

Parameters

1. substr | string

The substring we are trying to find in str.

2. str | string

The source string we are trying to locate the substring in.

Return value

Case

Return value

If the substr exists in str

Position of first occurrence of substr

If the substr does NOT exist in str

0

Examples

Consider the following table about some students:

student_id

fname

lname

day_enrolled

age

username

1

Sky

Towner

2015-12-03

17

stowner1

2

Ben

Davis

2016-04-20

19

bdavis2

3

Travis

Apple

2018-08-14

18

tapple3

4

Arthur

David

2016-04-01

16

adavid4

5

Benjamin

Town

2014-01-01

17

btown5

The above sample table can be created using the code here.

Basic usage

To find the position of first occurrence of 'd' in usernames:

SELECT username, POSITION('d' IN username) AS 'Position of d'
FROM students;
+----------+---------------+
| username | Position of d |
+----------+---------------+
| stowner1 | 0 |
| bdavis2 | 2 |
| tapple3 | 0 |
| adavid4 | 2 |
| btown5 | 0 |
+----------+---------------+

Note that counting of position starts at 1 in MySQL unlike some other programming languages that start at 0.

Case sensitivity

The search is NOT case-sensitive:

SELECT username, POSITION('D' IN username) AS 'Position of D'
FROM students;
+----------+---------------+
| username | Position of D |
+----------+---------------+
| stowner1 | 0 |
| bdavis2 | 2 |
| tapple3 | 0 |
| adavid4 | 2 |
| btown5 | 0 |
+----------+---------------+

Even when using 'D' (capital letter) as our substring, we still find matches in usernames bdavis and adavid4.

robocat
Published by Arthur Yanagisawa
Edited by 0 others
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