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317. INSTR Function

Learn how to locate a substring within a larger string using INSTR.

📘 Lesson 317 of 728 ⏱ 9 min 🎯 Intermediate

INSTR searches a string for the occurrence of another string and returns its position. It is commonly associated with Oracle and some other database systems.

Text searching is important when parsing identifiers, emails, addresses, and other semi-structured fields.

Find the position of a hyphen in an employee code.

SQL 
SELECT
    EmployeeCode,
    INSTR(EmployeeCode, '-') AS HyphenPosition
FROM Employees;

INSTR is useful for text parsing, data validation, identifier analysis, and string transformation.

  • INSTR searches for text within text.
  • It returns the position of the match.
  • It is commonly used in Oracle.
  • It supports text parsing.
  • Other databases may use POSITION or CHARINDEX.
What does INSTR return?

INSTR returns the position of a specified substring within a string.

Which SQL function can provide similar functionality?

Depending on the database, functions such as POSITION, CHARINDEX, or STRPOS can provide similar functionality.

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