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REPEAT function

Repeats a string the specified number of times. If the input parameter is numeric, REPEAT treats it as a string.

Synonym for REPLICATE function.

Syntax

REPEAT(string, integer)

Arguments

Return type

VARCHAR

Examples

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

To repeat the value of the CATID column in the CATEGORY table three times, use the following example.

SELECT catid, REPEAT(catid,3)
FROM category
ORDER BY 1,2;

+-------+--------+
| catid | repeat |
+-------+--------+
|     1 |    111 |
|     2 |    222 |
|     3 |    333 |
|     4 |    444 |
|     5 |    555 |
|     6 |    666 |
|     7 |    777 |
|     8 |    888 |
|     9 |    999 |
|    10 | 101010 |
|    11 | 111111 |
+-------+--------+

The following example demonstrates generating strings up to 16,000,000 bytes:

SELECT 
    LEN(REPEAT('X', 5000000)) AS five_million_bytes,
    LEN(REPEAT('Y', 16000000)) AS sixteen_million_bytes;

 five_million_bytes  | sixteen_million_bytes
----------+-----------
 5000000  | 16000000