Mirror of <https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/data/data-cloud-query-guide/references/dc-sql-reference/string-func.html> (Salesforce, Data 360 Query Guide), read 2026-10-23. Salesforce's own page is the authority; this copy exists because that site refuses non-browser readers.

String Functions and Operators

Applies to: ✅ Data 360 SQL ✅ Tableau Hyper API

Functions and operators for examining and manipulating string values. Use string functions to:

Transform case by converting strings to uppercase, lowercase, or title case.
Extract and search substrings, find positions, and split text.
Pad and trim strings to adjust length and remove unwanted characters.
Encode and hash data for storage or security purposes.

Character and byte length: Functions like char_length count characters, but octet_length counts bytes. This distinction matters for multi-byte UTF-8 characters.
1-based indexing: String positions start at 1, not 0.
NULL handling: The || operator returns NULL if either operand is NULL. Use concat to ignore NULL values.

For more information about supported types, see String Types.

Combine strings and values:

CONCAT — Concatenate multiple values, ignoring NULLs.
String Concatenation Operator (||) — Concatenate two strings or a string and a non-string value (NULL-sensitive).

Measure string size:

BIT_LENGTH — Get the number of bits in a string.
CHAR_LENGTH / CHARACTER_LENGTH — Count the number of characters in a string.
LENGTH — Count the number of characters in a string.
OCTET_LENGTH — Get the number of bytes in a string.

Transform string case:

INITCAP — Capitalize the first letter of each word.
LOWER — Convert to lowercase.
UPPER — Convert to uppercase.

Extract and locate substrings:

LEFT — Get the first _n_ characters.
OVERLAY — Replace a substring at a position.
POSITION — Find the location of a substring.
RIGHT — Get the last _n_ characters.
SPLIT — Split a string into an array by delimiter.
SPLIT_PART — Split a string on delimiter and return a field.
STRPOS — Find substring location (alternative syntax).
SUBSTR — Extract a substring (alternative syntax).
SUBSTRING — Extract a substring by position and length.

Adjust string length:

BTRIM — Remove characters from both ends.
LPAD — Pad a string on the left.
LTRIM — Remove characters from the start.
RPAD — Pad a string on the right.
RTRIM — Remove characters from the end.
SPACE — Generate a string of spaces.
TRIM — Remove characters from start, end, or both.

Transform and manipulate strings:

REPEAT — Repeat a string multiple times.
REPLACE — Replace all occurrences of a substring.
REVERSE — Reverse the characters in a string.

Check for substrings and string boundaries:

CONTAINS / ICONTAINS — Check whether a string contains a substring.
ENDS_WITH — Check whether a string ends with a suffix.
STARTS_WITH — Check whether a string starts with a prefix.

Convert between characters and codes:

ASCII — Get the ASCII code of the first character.
CHR — Get the character for an ASCII code.

Encode data and compute hashes:

DECODE — Decode text to binary data.
ENCODE — Encode binary data to text (base64, hex, escape).
MD5 — Compute the MD5 hash for data.
SHA256 — Compute the SHA-256 hash for data.
TO_BASE64 — Convert data to base64.
TO_HEX — Convert data to hexadecimal.

Prepare strings for SQL statements:

QUOTE_IDENT — Quote a string as an SQL identifier.
QUOTE_LITERAL — Quote a string as an SQL literal.

Normalize and clean user input.

Extract components from structured strings.

Format data for display.

Find and modify text patterns.