Categories:: String & binary functions (Matching/Comparison)

RIGHT¶

Returns a rightmost substring of its input.

RIGHT(STR, N) is equivalent to SUBSTR(STR, LENGTH(STR)-N+1, N).

See also:: LEFT , SUBSTR , SUBSTRING

Syntax¶

RIGHT( <string_expr> , <length_expr> )

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Arguments¶

string_expr

An expression that evaluates to a VARCHAR or BINARY value.

length_expr

An expression that evaluates to an integer. It specifies:

The number of UTF-8 characters to return if the input is a VARCHAR value.
The number of bytes to return if the input is a BINARY value.

Specify a length that is greater than or equal to zero. If the length is a negative number, the function returns an empty string.

Returns¶

The data type of the returned value is the same as the data type of the string_expr (VARCHAR or BINARY).

If any of the inputs are NULL, NULL is returned.

Usage notes¶

If length_expr is greater than the length of expr, then the function returns expr.

Collation details¶

Collation applies to VARCHAR inputs. Collation doesn’t apply if the input data type of the first parameter is BINARY.
No impact. Although collation is accepted syntactically, collations don’t affect processing. For example, two-character and three-character letters in languages (for example, “dzs” in Hungarian or “ch” in Czech) are still counted as two or three characters (not one character) for the length argument.
The collation of the result is the same as the collation of the input. This can be useful if the returned value is passed to another function as part of nested function calls.

Examples¶

The following examples use the RIGHT function.

Basic example¶

SELECT RIGHT('ABCDEFG', 3);

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+---------------------+
| RIGHT('ABCDEFG', 3) |
|---------------------|
| EFG                 |
+---------------------+

Returning substrings for email, phone, and date strings¶

The following examples return substrings for customer information in a table.

Create the table and insert data:

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE customer_contact_example (
    cust_id INT,
    cust_email VARCHAR,
    cust_phone VARCHAR,
    activation_date VARCHAR)
  AS SELECT
    column1,
    column2,
    column3,
    column4
  FROM
    VALUES
      (1, 'some_text@example.com', '800-555-0100', '20210320'),
      (2, 'some_other_text@example.org', '800-555-0101', '20240509'),
      (3, 'some_different_text@example.net', '800-555-0102', '20191017');

SELECT * from customer_contact_example;

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+---------+---------------------------------+--------------+-----------------+
| CUST_ID | CUST_EMAIL                      | CUST_PHONE   | ACTIVATION_DATE |
|---------+---------------------------------+--------------+-----------------|
|       1 | some_text@example.com           | 800-555-0100 | 20210320        |
|       2 | some_other_text@example.org     | 800-555-0101 | 20240509        |
|       3 | some_different_text@example.net | 800-555-0102 | 20191017        |
+---------+---------------------------------+--------------+-----------------+

Use the LENGTH and POSITION functions with the RIGHT function to extract the domains from email addresses. This example first finds the length of the input string and then subtracts the position of @ in each string to determine the length of the domain:

SELECT cust_id,
       cust_email,
       RIGHT(cust_email, LENGTH(cust_email) - (POSITION('@' IN cust_email))) AS domain
  FROM customer_contact_example;

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+---------+---------------------------------+-------------+
| CUST_ID | CUST_EMAIL                      | DOMAIN      |
|---------+---------------------------------+-------------|
|       1 | some_text@example.com           | example.com |
|       2 | some_other_text@example.org     | example.org |
|       3 | some_different_text@example.net | example.net |
+---------+---------------------------------+-------------+

Tip

You can use the POSITION function to find the position of other characters, such as an empty character (' ') or an underscore (_).

In the cust_phone column in the table, the area code is always the first three characters. Extract the phone numbers without the area codes:

SELECT cust_id,
       cust_phone,
       RIGHT(cust_phone, 8) AS phone_without_area_code
  FROM customer_contact_example;

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+---------+--------------+-------------------------+
| CUST_ID | CUST_PHONE   | PHONE_WITHOUT_AREA_CODE |
|---------+--------------+-------------------------|
|       1 | 800-555-0100 | 555-0100                |
|       2 | 800-555-0101 | 555-0101                |
|       3 | 800-555-0102 | 555-0102                |
+---------+--------------+-------------------------+

In the activation_date column in the table, the date is always in the format YYYYMMDD. Extract day from these strings:

SELECT cust_id,
       activation_date,
       RIGHT(activation_date, 2) AS day
  FROM customer_contact_example;

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+---------+-----------------+-----+
| CUST_ID | ACTIVATION_DATE | DAY |
|---------+-----------------+-----|
|       1 | 20210320        | 20  |
|       2 | 20240509        | 09  |
|       3 | 20191017        | 17  |
+---------+-----------------+-----+