INSTR Function

Returns the position of one string within another string.

Category: String
Returned data type: Integer

Syntax

INSTR(source, excerpt<, count>)

Required Arguments

source

specifies a string to search; this can be specified as string constant, field name, or expression.

excerpt

specifies a string to search for within source; this can be specified as string constant, field name, or expression.

Optional Argument

count

specifies an integer that indicates the occurrence of excerpt to search for; this can be specified as numeric constant, field name, or expression. For example, a value of 2 indicates to search for the second occurrence of excerpt in source.

Details

The INSTR function searches source from left to right for the count-th occurrence of excerpt. If excerpt is not found in source, the function returns a value of 0.

Example

source = "This is a simple sentence."
excerpt = "is"
 
position = instr(source, excerpt, 1) // outputs 3
position = instr(source, excerpt, 2) // outputs 6