REGEXP_SUBSTR function - Amazon Redshift
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REGEXP_SUBSTR function

Returns characters from a string by searching it for a regular expression pattern. REGEXP_SUBSTR is similar to the SUBSTRING function function, but lets you search a string for a regular expression pattern. If the function can't match the regular expression to any characters in the string, it returns an empty string. For more information about regular expressions, see POSIX operators and Regular expression in Wikipedia.

Syntax

REGEXP_SUBSTR( source_string, pattern [, position [, occurrence [, parameters ] ] ] )

Arguments

source_string

A string expression to be searched.

pattern

A UTF-8 string literal that represents a regular expression pattern. For more information, see POSIX operators.

position

A positive integer that indicates the position within source_string to begin searching. The position is based on the number of characters, not bytes, so that multi-byte characters are counted as single characters. The default is 1. If position is less than 1, the search begins at the first character of source_string. If position is greater than the number of characters in source_string, the result is an empty string ("").

occurrence

A positive integer that indicates which occurrence of the pattern to use. REGEXP_SUBSTR skips the first occurrence -1 matches. The default is 1. If occurrence is less than 1 or greater than the number of characters in source_string, the search is ignored and the result is NULL.

parameters

One or more string literals that indicate how the function matches the pattern. The possible values are the following:

  • c – Perform case-sensitive matching. The default is to use case-sensitive matching.

  • i – Perform case-insensitive matching.

  • e – Extract a substring using a subexpression.

    If pattern includes a subexpression, REGEXP_SUBSTR matches a substring using the first subexpression in pattern. A subexpression is an expression within the pattern that is bracketed with parentheses. For example, for the pattern 'This is a (\\w+)' matches the first expression with the string 'This is a ' followed by a word. Instead of returning pattern, REGEXP_SUBSTR with the e parameter returns only the string inside the subexpression.

    REGEXP_SUBSTR considers only the first subexpression; additional subexpressions are ignored. If the pattern doesn't have a subexpression, REGEXP_SUBSTR ignores the 'e' parameter.

  • p – Interpret the pattern with Perl Compatible Regular Expression (PCRE) dialect. For more information about PCRE, see Perl Compatible Regular Expressions in Wikipedia.

Return type

VARCHAR

Examples

The following example returns the portion of an email address between the @ character and the domain extension. The users data queried is from the Amazon Redshift sample data. For more information, see Sample database.

SELECT email, regexp_substr(email,'@[^.]*') FROM users ORDER BY userid LIMIT 4; email | regexp_substr -----------------------------------------------+-------------------------- Suspendisse.tristique@nonnisiAenean.edu | @nonnisiAenean amet.faucibus.ut@condimentumegetvolutpat.ca | @condimentumegetvolutpat sed@lacusUtnec.ca | @lacusUtnec Cum@accumsan.com | @accumsan

The following example returns the portion of the input corresponding to the first occurrence of the string FOX using case-insensitive matching.

SELECT regexp_substr('the fox', 'FOX', 1, 1, 'i'); regexp_substr --------------- fox

The following example returns the portion of the input corresponding to the second occurrence of the string FOX using case-insensitive matching. The result is NULL (empty) because there is no second occurrence.

SELECT regexp_substr('the fox', 'FOX', 1, 2, 'i'); regexp_substr ---------------

The following example returns the first portion of the input that begins with lowercase letters. This is functionally identical to the same SELECT statement without the c parameter.

SELECT regexp_substr('THE SECRET CODE IS THE LOWERCASE PART OF 1931abc0EZ.', '[a-z]+', 1, 1, 'c'); regexp_substr --------------- abc

The following example uses a pattern written in the PCRE dialect to locate words containing at least one number and one lowercase letter. It uses the ?= operator, which has a specific look-ahead connotation in PCRE. This example returns the portion of the input corresponding to the second such word.

SELECT regexp_substr('passwd7 plain A1234 a1234', '(?=[^ ]*[a-z])(?=[^ ]*[0-9])[^ ]+', 1, 2, 'p'); regexp_substr --------------- a1234

The following example uses a pattern written in the PCRE dialect to locate words containing at least one number and one lowercase letter. It uses the ?= operator, which has a specific look-ahead connotation in PCRE. This example returns the portion of the input corresponding to the second such word, but differs from the previous example in that it uses case-insensitive matching.

SELECT regexp_substr('passwd7 plain A1234 a1234', '(?=[^ ]*[a-z])(?=[^ ]*[0-9])[^ ]+', 1, 2, 'ip'); regexp_substr --------------- A1234

The following example uses a subexpression to find the second string matching the pattern 'this is a (\\w+)' using case-insensitive matching. It returns the subexpression inside the parentheses.

SELECT regexp_substr( 'This is a cat, this is a dog. This is a mouse.', 'this is a (\\w+)', 1, 2, 'ie'); regexp_substr --------------- dog