Substring

substring returns the characters in a string, starting at the location specified by the start argument and proceeding for the number of characters specified by the length arguments.

Syntax

substring(expression, start, length)

Arguments

expression

An expression can be the name of a field that uses the string data type like address1, a literal value like 'Unknown', or another function like substring(field_name,1,5).

start

The character location to start from. start is inclusive, so the character at the starting position is the first character in the returned value. The minimum value for start is 1.

length

The number of additional characters to include after start. length is inclusive of start, so the last character returned is (length - 1) after the starting character.

Return type

String

Example

The following example returns the 13th through 19th characters in a string. The beginning of the string is index 1, so you begin counting at the first character.

substring('Fantasy and Science Fiction',13,7)

The following value is returned.

Science