string

POSITION()

Returns the 1-based location of a substring within a string.

Description

POSITION finds where a substring first appears inside a string, returning the 1-based index (the first character is position 1). If the substring isn't found, it returns 0. The SQL-standard syntax is POSITION(needle IN haystack).

Syntax

POSITION(substring IN string)

Parameters

Name	Description	Optional
substring	The text to locate.	No
string	The text to search.	No

Return Type

Returns an INTEGER (0 if not found).

Examples

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POSITION vs STRPOS

POSITION(sub IN str) and STRPOS(str, sub) do the same thing with reversed argument order. Pick the one that reads better.

Common Mistakes

0-based expectation. SQL positions start at 1, not 0; not found is 0.
Argument order. It's POSITION(substring IN string), the reverse of many other functions.
Case sensitivity. Matching is case-sensitive; use LOWER to normalize.