LOCATE

Syntax

SQL

LOCATE (needle, haystack)
LOCATE (needle, haystack, startpos)

Arguments

needle: string to search for
haystack: any string or binary object
startpos: character position to start searching at

Note

This function is identical to INSTR but with the arguments reversed.

Return Type

Integer position, one-indexed. 0 if not found.

Examples

SQL

SELECT LOCATE('i', 'ohai');

+---------------------+
| LOCATE('i', 'ohai') |
+---------------------+
|                   4 |
+---------------------+

SQL

SELECT LOCATE('z', 'ohai');

+---------------------+
| LOCATE('z', 'ohai') |
+---------------------+
|                   0 |
+---------------------+

SQL

SELECT LOCATE('i', 'ohaiohai', 6);

+----------------------------+
| LOCATE('i', 'ohaiohai', 6) |
+----------------------------+
|                          8 |
+----------------------------+

Warning

Implicit Collation

When 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.

LOCATE

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Syntax

Arguments

Return Type

Examples

Implicit Collation

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