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ODBC Driver Guide


String Functions

Table 3–1 lists the string functions that ODBC supports.

The string functions listed can take the following arguments:

The string functions are one-based; that is, the first character in the string is character 1.

Character string literals must be surrounded in single quotation marks.

Table 3–1: Scalar String Functions
Function
Returns
ASCII(string_exp) 
ASCII code value of the leftmost character of string_exp as an integer.
BIT_LENGTH(string_exp) 
ODBC 3.0 
The length in bits of the string expression.
CHAR(code) 
The character with the ASCII code value specified by code. code should be between 0 and 255; otherwise, the return value is data-source dependent.
CHAR_LENGTH(string_exp) 
ODBC 3.0 
The length in characters of the string expression, if the string expression is of a character data type; otherwise, the length in bytes of the string expression (the smallest integer not less than the number of bits divided by 8). (This function is the same as the CHARACTER_LENGTH function.)
CHARACTER_LENGTH(string_exp) 
ODBC 3.0 
The length in characters of the string expression, if the string expression is of a character data type; otherwise, the length in bytes of the string expression (the smallest integer not less than the number of bits divided by 8). (This function is the same as the CHAR_LENGTH function.)
CONCAT(string_exp1,string_exp) 
The string resulting from concatenating string_exp2 and string_exp1. The string is system dependent.
DIFFERENCE(string_exp2 and 
string_exp1) 
An integer value that indicates the difference between the values returned by the SOUNDEX function for string_exp2 and string_exp1.
INSERT(string_exp1 , start, 
length, string_exp2) 
A string where length characters have been deleted from string_exp1 beginning at start and where string_exp2 has been inserted into string_exp, beginning at start.
LCASE(string_exp) 
Uppercase characters in string_exp converted to lowercase.
LEFT(string_exp, count) 
The count of characters of string_exp.
LENGTH(string_exp) 
The number of characters in string_exp, excluding trailing blanks and the string termination character.
LOCATE(string_exp1, string_exp2 
[,start,]) 
The starting position of the first occurrence of string_exp1 within string_exp2. If start is not specified the search begins with the first character position in string_exp2. If start is specified, the search begins with the character position indicated by the value of start. The first character position in string_exp2 is indicated by the value 1. If string_exp1 is not found, 0 is returned.
LTRIM(string_exp) 
The characters of string_exp, with leading blanks removed.
OCTET_LENGTH(string_exp) 
ODBC 3.0 
The length in bytes of the string expression. The result is the smallest integer not less than the number of bits divided by 8.
POSITION(character_exp IN 
character_exp) 
The position of the first character expression in the second character expression. The result is an exact numeric with an implementation-defined precision and a scale of 0.
REPEAT(string_exp, count) 
A string composed of string_exp repeated count times.
REPLACE(string_exp1, string_exp2, 
string_exp3) 
Replaces all occurrences of string_exp2 in string_exp1 with string_exp3.
RIGHT(string_exp, count) 
The rightmost count of characters in string_exp.
RTRIM(string_exp) 
The characters of string_exp with trailing blanks removed.
SPACE(count) 
A string consisting of count spaces.
SUBSTRING(string_exp , start, 
length) 
A string derived from string_exp beginning at the character position start for length characters.
UCASE(string_exp) 
Lowercase characters in string_exp converted to uppercase.


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