# FIELD

Returns the first index of the `str` argument in the `str1`, `str2`, … list, or 0 if it doesn’t exist.

## Syntax

```sql
FIELD (str, str1, str2, ...)

```

## Remarks

If all arguments are strings, then all arguments are compared as strings. If all arguments are numbers, they are compared as numbers. Otherwise, the arguments are compared as double.

If `str` is NULL, the return value is 0 because NULL fails equality comparison with any value.

## Arguments

* `str`: any string or binary object
* `str1`, `str2`, … : list of strings or binary objects

## Return Type

Integer

## Example

```sql
SELECT FIELD('abra', 'cadabra', 'abra', 'abracadabra');

```

```output

+-------------------------------------------------+
| FIELD('abra', 'cadabra', 'abra', 'abracadabra') |
+-------------------------------------------------+
|                                               2 |
+-------------------------------------------------+

```

> **⚠️ Warning**: ## Implicit CollationWhen `character_set_server` is set to `utf8`, string literals with characters using 4-byte encoding are implicitly assigned binary collation and processed as a sequence of bytes rather than characters. This implicit conversion to binary collation causes string functions to return unexpected results. To avoid using implicit binary collation, either use explicit type casting or use database columns defined with the `utf8mb4` character set. For more information, refer to [Implicit Collation in Special Cases](https://docs.singlestore.com/cloud/reference/sql-reference/character-encoding/special-cases.md).

***

Modified at: February 27, 2023

Source: [/cloud/reference/sql-reference/string-functions/field/](https://docs.singlestore.com/cloud/reference/sql-reference/string-functions/field/)

(An index of the documentation is available at /llms.txt)