Categories:: String functions (regular expressions)

REGEXP_LIKE¶

Performs a comparison to determine whether a string matches a specified pattern. Both inputs must be text expressions.

REGEXP_LIKE is similar to the LIKE function, but with POSIX extended regular expressions instead of SQL LIKE pattern syntax. REGEXP_LIKE supports more complex matching conditions than LIKE.

Tip

You can use the search optimization service to improve the performance of queries that call this function. For details, see Search Optimization Service.

Aliases:: RLIKE (1st syntax)

Syntax¶

REGEXP_LIKE( <subject> , <pattern> [ , <parameters> ] )

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Arguments¶

Required:

subject

The string to search for matches.

pattern

Pattern to match.

For guidelines on specifying patterns, see String functions (regular expressions).

Optional:

parameters

String of one or more characters that specifies the parameters used for searching for matches. Supported values:

Parameter	Description
`c`	Case-sensitive matching
`i`	Case-insensitive matching
`m`	Multi-line mode
`e`	Extract submatches
`s`	Single-line mode POSIX wildcard character `.` matches `\n`

Default: c

For more information, see Specifying the parameters for the regular expression.

Returns¶

Returns a BOOLEAN value or NULL:

Returns TRUE if there is a match.
Returns FALSE if there isn’t a match.
Returns NULL if any argument is NULL.

Usage Notes¶

The function implicitly anchors a pattern at both ends (for example, '' automatically becomes '^$', and 'ABC' automatically becomes '^ABC$'). For example, to match any string starting with ABC, the pattern is 'ABC.*'.
The backslash character (\) is the escape character. For more information, see Specifying regular expressions in single-quoted string constants.
For more usage notes, see the General usage notes for regular expression functions.

Collation Details¶

Arguments with collation specifications currently aren’t supported.

Examples¶

The following examples use the REGEXP_LIKE function:

Run basic regular expression queries on strings
Run regular expression queries on strings with special characters

For additional examples of regular expressions, see REGEXP.

Run basic regular expression queries on strings¶

Create a table with names of cities:

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE cities(city VARCHAR(20));

INSERT INTO cities VALUES
  ('Sacramento'),
  ('San Francisco'),
  ('San Luis Obispo'),
  ('San Jose'),
  ('Santa Barbara'),
  ('Palo Alto'),
  (NULL);

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You can use .* as a wildcard to match as many characters as possible. The following example matches the pattern Fran anywhere in the string value:

SELECT * FROM cities WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(city, '.*Fran.*');

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+---------------+
| CITY          |
|---------------|
| San Francisco |
+---------------+

The following example uses the i parameter for case-insensitive matching:

SELECT * FROM cities WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(city, '.*fran.*', 'i');

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+---------------+
| CITY          |
|---------------|
| San Francisco |
+---------------+

To find a pattern that matches the beginning of a string value, run a query that uses a wildcard:

SELECT * FROM cities WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(city, 'san.*', 'i');

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+-----------------+
| CITY            |
|-----------------|
| San Francisco   |
| San Luis Obispo |
| San Jose        |
| Santa Barbara   |
+-----------------+

To run a case-sensitive query with a wildcard, omit the i parameter:

SELECT * FROM cities WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(city, 'san.*');

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+------+
| CITY |
|------|
+------+

You can use the \w+ metacharacter to match one word and \s metacharacter to match one whitespace character, such as a space or a tab. The following query searches for the values that include one word, followed by a whitespace character, followed by one word:

SELECT * FROM cities WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(city, '\\w+\\s\\w+');

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+---------------+
| CITY          |
|---------------|
| San Francisco |
| San Jose      |
| Santa Barbara |
| Palo Alto     |
+---------------+

The output for the query doesn’t include San Luis Obispo because that value has three words with a space between the first and second words instead of only two words with a space in between them.

In a regular expression, you can often use an uppercase metacharacter to negate the meaning of a lowercase metacharacter. For example, run a query that searches for the values that don’t include a whitespace character between two words by using the \S metacharacter:

SELECT * FROM cities WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(city, '\\w+\\S\\w+');

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+------------+
| CITY       |
|------------|
| Sacramento |
+------------+

Run regular expression queries on strings with special characters¶

The examples in this section search for values with special characters, which are characters other than a-z, A-Z, underscore (“_”), or decimal digit.

To search for a metacharacter, escape the metacharacter. For more information, see Specifying regular expressions in single-quoted string constants.

Create a table, and then insert some values with special characters:

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE regex_special_characters(v VARCHAR(20));

INSERT INTO regex_special_characters VALUES
  ('Snow'),
  ('Sn.ow'),
  ('Sn@ow'),
  ('Sn$ow'),
  ('Sn\\ow');

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The first inserted value doesn’t contain special characters.

To show the data, query the table:

SELECT * FROM regex_special_characters;

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+-------+
| V     |
|-------|
| Snow  |
| Sn.ow |
| Sn@ow |
| Sn$ow |
| Sn\ow |
+-------+

You can search for any special character by using the \W Perl backslash-sequence, which searches for characters that aren’t “word” characters. For example, the following query searches for the values in the table that have special characters:

SELECT *
  FROM regex_special_characters
  WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(v, '.*\\W.*');

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+-------+
| V     |
|-------|
| Sn.ow |
| Sn@ow |
| Sn$ow |
| Sn\ow |
+-------+

To search for metacharacters in a single-quoted string constant, you must escape the metacharacter with two backslashes. For example, the following query searches for the values that contain the $ metacharacter:

SELECT *
  FROM regex_special_characters
  WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(v, '.*\\$.*');

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+-------+
| V     |
|-------|
| Sn$ow |
+-------+

If you search for a backslash, an additional backslash escape character is required. For example, the following query searches for the values that contain the \ or the . metacharacter:

SELECT *
  FROM regex_special_characters
  WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(v, '.*(\\.|\\\\).*');

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+-------+
| V     |
|-------|
| Sn.ow |
| Sn\ow |
+-------+