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EXTCHARS

The EXTCHARS function extracts a portion of a text expression.

Return Value

TEXT or NTEXT

Syntax

EXTCHARS(text-expression [start [length]])

Arguments

text-expression

The expression from which a portion is to be extracted. When text-expression is a multiline text value, EXTCHARS preserves the line breaks in the returned value.

When you specify a TEXT expression, the return value is TEXT. When you specify an NTEXT expression, the return value is NTEXT.

start

An integer that represents the character position at which to begin extracting. The position of the first character in text-expression is 1. When you omit this argument, EXTCHARS starts with the first character.

length

An integer that represents the number of characters to be extracted. When length is not specified, or exceeds the number of characters from start to the end of text-expression, the part from start to the end of text-expression is extracted.

Notes

multibyte Characters

When you are using a multibyte character set, you can use the EXTBYTES function instead of the EXTCHARS function.

Examples

Example 12-6 Extracting Text Characters

This example shows how to extract portions of text from the TEXT value 'hellotherejoe'.

• The statement

  SHOW EXTCHARS('hellotherejoe', 6, 5)
  
  

  produces the following output.

  there
  
  

• The statement

  SHOW EXTCHARS('hellotherejoe', 11)
  
  

  produces the following output.

  joe