LEFT and RIGHT functions - Amazon Redshift
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LEFT and RIGHT functions

These functions return the specified number of leftmost or rightmost characters from a character string.

The number is based on the number of characters, not bytes, so that multibyte characters are counted as single characters.

Syntax

LEFT( string, integer ) RIGHT( string, integer )

Arguments

string

A CHAR string, a VARCHAR string, or any expression that evaluates to a CHAR or VARCHAR string.

integer

A positive integer.

Return type

VARCHAR

Examples

The following example uses data from the EVENT table in the TICKIT sample database. For more information, see Sample database.

To return the leftmost 5 and rightmost 5 characters from event names that have event IDs between 1000 and 1005, use the following example.

SELECT eventid, eventname, LEFT(eventname,5) AS left_5, RIGHT(eventname,5) AS right_5 FROM event WHERE eventid BETWEEN 1000 AND 1005 ORDER BY 1; +---------+----------------+--------+---------+ | eventid | eventname | left_5 | right_5 | +---------+----------------+--------+---------+ | 1000 | Gypsy | Gypsy | Gypsy | | 1001 | Chicago | Chica | icago | | 1002 | The King and I | The K | and I | | 1003 | Pal Joey | Pal J | Joey | | 1004 | Grease | Greas | rease | | 1005 | Chicago | Chica | icago | +---------+----------------+--------+---------+