REGEXP_INSTR

Returns the starting index of the substring of the string expr that matches the regular expression specified by the pattern pat, 0 if there is no match. If expr or pat is NULL, the return value is NULL. Character indexes begin at 1.

Syntax

REGEXP_INSTR(<expr>, <pat[, pos[, occurrence[, return_option[, match_type]]]]>)

Arguments

Arguments	Description
expr	The string expr that to be matched
pat	The regular expression
pos	Optional. The position in expr at which to start the search. If omitted, the default is 1.
occurrence	Optional. Which occurrence of a match to search for. If omitted, the default is 1.
return_option	Optional. Which type of position to return. If this value is 0, REGEXP_INSTR() returns the position of the matched substring's first character. If this value is 1, REGEXP_INSTR() returns the position following the matched substring. If omitted, the default is 0.
match_type	Optional. A string that specifies how to perform matching. The meaning is as described for REGEXP_LIKE().

Return Type

A number data type value.

Examples

SELECT REGEXP_INSTR('dog cat dog', 'dog');
+------------------------------------+
| REGEXP_INSTR('dog cat dog', 'dog') |
+------------------------------------+
|                                  1 |
+------------------------------------+

SELECT REGEXP_INSTR('dog cat dog', 'dog', 2);
+---------------------------------------+
| REGEXP_INSTR('dog cat dog', 'dog', 2) |
+---------------------------------------+
|                                     9 |
+---------------------------------------+

SELECT REGEXP_INSTR('aa aaa aaaa', 'a{2}');
+-------------------------------------+
| REGEXP_INSTR('aa aaa aaaa', 'a{2}') |
+-------------------------------------+
|                                   1 |
+-------------------------------------+

SELECT REGEXP_INSTR('aa aaa aaaa', 'a{4}');
+-------------------------------------+
| REGEXP_INSTR('aa aaa aaaa', 'a{4}') |
+-------------------------------------+
|                                   8 |
+-------------------------------------+