ClickHouse/docs/en/sql-reference/functions/string-search-functions.md
2023-07-10 09:18:09 +00:00

683 lines
25 KiB
Markdown
Raw Blame History

This file contains ambiguous Unicode characters

This file contains Unicode characters that might be confused with other characters. If you think that this is intentional, you can safely ignore this warning. Use the Escape button to reveal them.

---
slug: /en/sql-reference/functions/string-search-functions
sidebar_position: 160
sidebar_label: Searching in Strings
---
# Functions for Searching in Strings
All functions in this section search by default case-sensitively. Case-insensitive search is usually provided by separate function variants.
Note that case-insensitive search follows the lowercase-uppercase rules of the English language. E.g. Uppercased `i` in English language is
`I` whereas in Turkish language it is `İ` - results for languages other than English may be unexpected.
Functions in this section also assume that the searched string and the search string are single-byte encoded text. If this assumption is
violated, no exception is thrown and results are undefined. Search with UTF-8 encoded strings is usually provided by separate function
variants. Likewise, if a UTF-8 function variant is used and the input strings are not UTF-8 encoded text, no exception is thrown and the
results are undefined. Note that no automatic Unicode normalization is performed, you can use the
[normalizeUTF8*()](https://clickhouse.com/docs/en/sql-reference/functions/string-functions/) functions for that.
[General strings functions](string-functions.md) and [functions for replacing in strings](string-replace-functions.md) are described separately.
## position
Returns the position (in bytes, starting at 1) of a substring `needle` in a string `haystack`.
**Syntax**
``` sql
position(haystack, needle[, start_pos])
```
Alias:
- `position(needle IN haystack)`
- `locate(haystack, needle[, start_pos])`.
**Arguments**
- `haystack` — String in which the search is performed. [String](../../sql-reference/syntax.md#syntax-string-literal).
- `needle` — Substring to be searched. [String](../../sql-reference/syntax.md#syntax-string-literal).
- `start_pos` Position (1-based) in `haystack` at which the search starts. [UInt](../../sql-reference/data-types/int-uint.md). Optional.
**Returned values**
- Starting position in bytes and counting from 1, if the substring was found.
- 0, if the substring was not found.
If substring `needle` is empty, these rules apply:
- if no `start_pos` was specified: return `1`
- if `start_pos = 0`: return `1`
- if `start_pos >= 1` and `start_pos <= length(haystack) + 1`: return `start_pos`
- otherwise: return `0`
The same rules also apply to functions `positionCaseInsensitive`, `positionUTF8` and `positionCaseInsensitiveUTF8`
Type: `Integer`.
**Examples**
``` sql
SELECT position('Hello, world!', '!');
```
Result:
``` text
┌─position('Hello, world!', '!')─┐
│ 13 │
└────────────────────────────────┘
```
Example with `start_pos` argument:
``` sql
SELECT
position('Hello, world!', 'o', 1),
position('Hello, world!', 'o', 7)
```
``` text
┌─position('Hello, world!', 'o', 1)─┬─position('Hello, world!', 'o', 7)─┐
│ 5 │ 9 │
└───────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────┘
```
Example for `needle IN haystack` syntax:
```sql
SELECT 6 = position('/' IN s) FROM (SELECT 'Hello/World' AS s);
```
Result:
```text
┌─equals(6, position(s, '/'))─┐
│ 1 │
└─────────────────────────────┘
```
Examples with empty `needle` substring:
``` sql
SELECT
position('abc', ''),
position('abc', '', 0),
position('abc', '', 1),
position('abc', '', 2),
position('abc', '', 3),
position('abc', '', 4),
position('abc', '', 5)
```
``` text
┌─position('abc', '')─┬─position('abc', '', 0)─┬─position('abc', '', 1)─┬─position('abc', '', 2)─┬─position('abc', '', 3)─┬─position('abc', '', 4)─┬─position('abc', '', 5)─┐
│ 1 │ 1 │ 1 │ 2 │ 3 │ 4 │ 0 │
└─────────────────────┴────────────────────────┴────────────────────────┴────────────────────────┴────────────────────────┴────────────────────────┴────────────────────────┘
```
## positionCaseInsensitive
Like [position](#position) but searches case-insensitively.
## positionUTF8
Like [position](#position) but assumes `haystack` and `needle` are UTF-8 encoded strings.
**Examples**
Function `positionUTF8` correctly counts character `ö` (represented by two points) as a single Unicode codepoint:
``` sql
SELECT positionUTF8('Motörhead', 'r');
```
Result:
``` text
┌─position('Motörhead', 'r')─┐
│ 5 │
└────────────────────────────┘
```
## positionCaseInsensitiveUTF8
Like [positionUTF8](#positionutf8) but searches case-insensitively.
## multiSearchAllPositions
Like [position](#position) but returns an array of positions (in bytes, starting at 1) for multiple `needle` substrings in a `haystack` string.
:::note
All `multiSearch*()` functions only support up to 2<sup>8</sup> needles.
:::
**Syntax**
``` sql
multiSearchAllPositions(haystack, [needle1, needle2, ..., needleN])
```
**Arguments**
- `haystack` — String in which the search is performed. [String](../../sql-reference/syntax.md#syntax-string-literal).
- `needle` — Substrings to be searched. Array
**Returned values**
- Array of the starting position in bytes and counting from 1 (if the substring was found) or 0 (if the substring was not found)
**Example**
``` sql
SELECT multiSearchAllPositions('Hello, World!', ['hello', '!', 'world']);
```
Result:
``` text
┌─multiSearchAllPositions('Hello, World!', ['hello', '!', 'world'])─┐
│ [0,13,0] │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
## multiSearchAllPositionsUTF8
Like [multiSearchAllPositions](#multiSearchAllPositions) but assumes `haystack` and the `needle`-s are UTF-8 encoded strings.
## multiSearchFirstPosition
Like `position` but returns the leftmost offset in a `haystack` string which matches any of multiple `needle` strings.
Functions `multiSearchFirstPositionCaseInsensitive`, `multiSearchFirstPositionUTF8` and `multiSearchFirstPositionCaseInsensitiveUTF8` provide case-insensitive and/or UTF-8 variants of this function.
**Syntax**
```sql
multiSearchFirstPosition(haystack, \[needle<sub>1</sub>, needle<sub>2</sub>, …, needle<sub>n</sub>\])
```
## multiSearchFirstIndex
Returns the index `i` (starting from 1) of the leftmost found needle<sub>i</sub> in the string `haystack` and 0 otherwise.
Functions `multiSearchFirstIndexCaseInsensitive`, `multiSearchFirstIndexUTF8` and `multiSearchFirstIndexCaseInsensitiveUTF8` provide case-insensitive and/or UTF-8 variants of this function.
**Syntax**
```sql
multiSearchFirstIndex(haystack, \[needle<sub>1</sub>, needle<sub>2</sub>, , needle<sub>n</sub>\])
```
## multiSearchAny
Returns 1, if at least one string needle<sub>i</sub> matches the string `haystack` and 0 otherwise.
Functions `multiSearchAnyCaseInsensitive`, `multiSearchAnyUTF8` and `multiSearchAnyCaseInsensitiveUTF8` provide case-insensitive and/or UTF-8 variants of this function.
**Syntax**
```sql
multiSearchAny(haystack, \[needle<sub>1</sub>, needle<sub>2</sub>, , needle<sub>n</sub>\])
```
## match
Returns whether string `haystack` matches the regular expression `pattern` in [re2 regular syntax](https://github.com/google/re2/wiki/Syntax).
Matching is based on UTF-8, e.g. `.` matches the Unicode code point `¥` which is represented in UTF-8 using two bytes. The regular
expression must not contain null bytes. If the haystack or the pattern are not valid UTF-8, then the behavior is undefined.
Unlike re2's default behavior, `.` matches line breaks. To disable this, prepend the pattern with `(?-s)`.
If you only want to search substrings in a string, you can use functions [like](#like) or [position](#position) instead - they work much faster than this function.
**Syntax**
```sql
match(haystack, pattern)
```
Alias: `haystack REGEXP pattern operator`
## multiMatchAny
Like `match` but returns 1 if at least one of the patterns match and 0 otherwise.
:::note
Functions in the `multi[Fuzzy]Match*()` family use the the (Vectorscan)[https://github.com/VectorCamp/vectorscan] library. As such, they are only enabled if ClickHouse is compiled with support for vectorscan.
To turn off all functions that use hyperscan, use setting `SET allow_hyperscan = 0;`.
Due to restrictions of vectorscan, the length of the `haystack` string must be less than 2<sup>32</sup> bytes.
Hyperscan is generally vulnerable to regular expression denial of service (ReDoS) attacks (e.g. see
(here)[https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity22/presentation/turonova], (here)[https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-021-10033-1] and
(here)[https://doi.org/10.1145/3236024.3236027]. Users are adviced to check the provided patterns carefully.
:::
If you only want to search multiple substrings in a string, you can use function [multiSearchAny](#multisearchany) instead - it works much faster than this function.
**Syntax**
```sql
multiMatchAny(haystack, \[pattern<sub>1</sub>, pattern<sub>2</sub>, , pattern<sub>n</sub>\])
```
## multiMatchAnyIndex
Like `multiMatchAny` but returns any index that matches the haystack.
**Syntax**
```sql
multiMatchAnyIndex(haystack, \[pattern<sub>1</sub>, pattern<sub>2</sub>, , pattern<sub>n</sub>\])
```
## multiMatchAllIndices
Like `multiMatchAny` but returns the array of all indices that match the haystack in any order.
**Syntax**
```sql
multiMatchAllIndices(haystack, \[pattern<sub>1</sub>, pattern<sub>2</sub>, , pattern<sub>n</sub>\])
```
## multiFuzzyMatchAny
Like `multiMatchAny` but returns 1 if any pattern matches the haystack within a constant [edit distance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_distance). This function relies on the experimental feature of [hyperscan](https://intel.github.io/hyperscan/dev-reference/compilation.html#approximate-matching) library, and can be slow for some corner cases. The performance depends on the edit distance value and patterns used, but it's always more expensive compared to a non-fuzzy variants.
:::note
`multiFuzzyMatch*()` function family do not support UTF-8 regular expressions (it threats them as a sequence of bytes) due to restrictions of hyperscan.
:::
**Syntax**
```sql
multiFuzzyMatchAny(haystack, distance, \[pattern<sub>1</sub>, pattern<sub>2</sub>, , pattern<sub>n</sub>\])
```
## multiFuzzyMatchAnyIndex
Like `multiFuzzyMatchAny` but returns any index that matches the haystack within a constant edit distance.
**Syntax**
```sql
multiFuzzyMatchAnyIndex(haystack, distance, \[pattern<sub>1</sub>, pattern<sub>2</sub>, , pattern<sub>n</sub>\])
```
## multiFuzzyMatchAllIndices
Like `multiFuzzyMatchAny` but returns the array of all indices in any order that match the haystack within a constant edit distance.
**Syntax**
```sql
multiFuzzyMatchAllIndices(haystack, distance, \[pattern<sub>1</sub>, pattern<sub>2</sub>, , pattern<sub>n</sub>\])
```
## extract
Extracts a fragment of a string using a regular expression. If `haystack` does not match the `pattern` regex, an empty string is returned.
For regex without subpatterns, the function uses the fragment that matches the entire regex. Otherwise, it uses the fragment that matches the first subpattern.
**Syntax**
```sql
extract(haystack, pattern)
```
## extractAll
Extracts all fragments of a string using a regular expression. If `haystack` does not match the `pattern` regex, an empty string is returned.
Returns an array of strings consisting of all matches of the regex.
The behavior with respect to subpatterns is the same as in function `extract`.
**Syntax**
```sql
extractAll(haystack, pattern)
```
## extractAllGroupsHorizontal
Matches all groups of the `haystack` string using the `pattern` regular expression. Returns an array of arrays, where the first array includes all fragments matching the first group, the second array - matching the second group, etc.
This function is slower than [extractAllGroupsVertical](#extractallgroups-vertical).
**Syntax**
``` sql
extractAllGroupsHorizontal(haystack, pattern)
```
**Arguments**
- `haystack` — Input string. Type: [String](../../sql-reference/data-types/string.md).
- `pattern` — Regular expression with [re2 syntax](https://github.com/google/re2/wiki/Syntax). Must contain groups, each group enclosed in parentheses. If `pattern` contains no groups, an exception is thrown. Type: [String](../../sql-reference/data-types/string.md).
**Returned value**
- Type: [Array](../../sql-reference/data-types/array.md).
If `haystack` does not match the `pattern` regex, an array of empty arrays is returned.
**Example**
``` sql
SELECT extractAllGroupsHorizontal('abc=111, def=222, ghi=333', '("[^"]+"|\\w+)=("[^"]+"|\\w+)');
```
Result:
``` text
┌─extractAllGroupsHorizontal('abc=111, def=222, ghi=333', '("[^"]+"|\\w+)=("[^"]+"|\\w+)')─┐
│ [['abc','def','ghi'],['111','222','333']] │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
## extractAllGroupsVertical
Matches all groups of the `haystack` string using the `pattern` regular expression. Returns an array of arrays, where each array includes matching fragments from every group. Fragments are grouped in order of appearance in the `haystack`.
**Syntax**
``` sql
extractAllGroupsVertical(haystack, pattern)
```
**Arguments**
- `haystack` — Input string. Type: [String](../../sql-reference/data-types/string.md).
- `pattern` — Regular expression with [re2 syntax](https://github.com/google/re2/wiki/Syntax). Must contain groups, each group enclosed in parentheses. If `pattern` contains no groups, an exception is thrown. Type: [String](../../sql-reference/data-types/string.md).
**Returned value**
- Type: [Array](../../sql-reference/data-types/array.md).
If `haystack` does not match the `pattern` regex, an empty array is returned.
**Example**
``` sql
SELECT extractAllGroupsVertical('abc=111, def=222, ghi=333', '("[^"]+"|\\w+)=("[^"]+"|\\w+)');
```
Result:
``` text
┌─extractAllGroupsVertical('abc=111, def=222, ghi=333', '("[^"]+"|\\w+)=("[^"]+"|\\w+)')─┐
│ [['abc','111'],['def','222'],['ghi','333']] │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
## like
Returns whether string `haystack` matches the LIKE expression `pattern`.
A LIKE expression can contain normal characters and the following metasymbols:
- `%` indicates an arbitrary number of arbitrary characters (including zero characters).
- `_` indicates a single arbitrary character.
- `\` is for escaping literals `%`, `_` and `\`.
Matching is based on UTF-8, e.g. `_` matches the Unicode code point `¥` which is represented in UTF-8 using two bytes.
If the haystack or the LIKE expression are not valid UTF-8, the behavior is undefined.
No automatic Unicode normalization is performed, you can use the [normalizeUTF8*()](https://clickhouse.com/docs/en/sql-reference/functions/string-functions/) functions for that.
To match against literal `%`, `_` and `/` (which are LIKE metacharacters), prepend them with a backslash: `\%`, `\_` and `\\`.
The backslash loses its special meaning (i.e. is interpreted literally) if it prepends a character different than `%`, `_` or `\`.
Note that ClickHouse requires backslashes in strings [to be quoted as well](../syntax.md#string), so you would actually need to write `\\%`, `\\_` and `\\\\`.
For LIKE expressions of the form `%needle%`, the function is as fast as the `position` function.
All other LIKE expressions are internally converted to a regular expression and executed with a performance similar to function `match`.
**Syntax**
```sql
like(haystack, pattern)
```
Alias: `haystack LIKE pattern` (operator)
## notLike
Like `like` but negates the result.
Alias: `haystack NOT LIKE pattern` (operator)
## ilike
Like `like` but searches case-insensitively.
Alias: `haystack ILIKE pattern` (operator)
## notILike
Like `ilike` but negates the result.
Alias: `haystack NOT ILIKE pattern` (operator)
## ngramDistance
Calculates the 4-gram distance between a `haystack` string and a `needle` string. For that, it counts the symmetric difference between two multisets of 4-grams and normalizes it by the sum of their cardinalities. Returns a Float32 between 0 and 1. The smaller the result is, the more strings are similar to each other. Throws an exception if constant `needle` or `haystack` arguments are more than 32Kb in size. If any of non-constant `haystack` or `needle` arguments is more than 32Kb in size, the distance is always 1.
Functions `ngramDistanceCaseInsensitive, ngramDistanceUTF8, ngramDistanceCaseInsensitiveUTF8` provide case-insensitive and/or UTF-8 variants of this function.
**Syntax**
```sql
ngramDistance(haystack, needle)
```
## ngramSearch
Like `ngramDistance` but calculates the non-symmetric difference between a `needle` string and a `haystack` string, i.e. the number of n-grams from needle minus the common number of n-grams normalized by the number of `needle` n-grams. Returns a Float32 between 0 and 1. The bigger the result is, the more likely `needle` is in the `haystack`. This function is useful for fuzzy string search. Also see function `soundex`.
Functions `ngramSearchCaseInsensitive, ngramSearchUTF8, ngramSearchCaseInsensitiveUTF8` provide case-insensitive and/or UTF-8 variants of this function.
:::note
The UTF-8 variants use the 3-gram distance. These are not perfectly fair n-gram distances. We use 2-byte hashes to hash n-grams and then calculate the (non-)symmetric difference between these hash tables collisions may occur. With UTF-8 case-insensitive format we do not use fair `tolower` function we zero the 5-th bit (starting from zero) of each codepoint byte and first bit of zeroth byte if bytes more than one this works for Latin and mostly for all Cyrillic letters.
:::
**Syntax**
```sql
ngramSearch(haystack, needle)
```
## countSubstrings
Returns how often substring `needle` occurs in string `haystack`.
Functions `countSubstringsCaseInsensitive` and `countSubstringsCaseInsensitiveUTF8` provide a case-insensitive and case-insensitive + UTF-8 variants of this function.
**Syntax**
``` sql
countSubstrings(haystack, needle[, start_pos])
```
**Arguments**
- `haystack` — String in which the search is performed. [String](../../sql-reference/syntax.md#syntax-string-literal).
- `needle` — Substring to be searched. [String](../../sql-reference/syntax.md#syntax-string-literal).
- `start_pos` Position (1-based) in `haystack` at which the search starts. [UInt](../../sql-reference/data-types/int-uint.md). Optional.
**Returned values**
- The number of occurrences.
Type: [UInt64](../../sql-reference/data-types/int-uint.md).
**Examples**
``` sql
SELECT countSubstrings('aaaa', 'aa');
```
Result:
``` text
┌─countSubstrings('aaaa', 'aa')─┐
│ 2 │
└───────────────────────────────┘
```
Example with `start_pos` argument:
```sql
SELECT countSubstrings('abc___abc', 'abc', 4);
```
Result:
``` text
┌─countSubstrings('abc___abc', 'abc', 4)─┐
│ 1 │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
## countMatches
Returns the number of regular expression matches for a `pattern` in a `haystack`.
**Syntax**
``` sql
countMatches(haystack, pattern)
```
**Arguments**
- `haystack` — The string to search in. [String](../../sql-reference/syntax.md#syntax-string-literal).
- `pattern` — The regular expression with [re2 syntax](https://github.com/google/re2/wiki/Syntax). [String](../../sql-reference/data-types/string.md).
**Returned value**
- The number of matches.
Type: [UInt64](../../sql-reference/data-types/int-uint.md).
**Examples**
``` sql
SELECT countMatches('foobar.com', 'o+');
```
Result:
``` text
┌─countMatches('foobar.com', 'o+')─┐
│ 2 │
└──────────────────────────────────┘
```
``` sql
SELECT countMatches('aaaa', 'aa');
```
Result:
``` text
┌─countMatches('aaaa', 'aa')────┐
│ 2 │
└───────────────────────────────┘
```
## regexpExtract
Extracts the first string in haystack that matches the regexp pattern and corresponds to the regex group index.
**Syntax**
``` sql
regexpExtract(haystack, pattern[, index])
```
Alias: `REGEXP_EXTRACT(haystack, pattern[, index])`.
**Arguments**
- `haystack` — String, in which regexp pattern will to be matched. [String](../../sql-reference/syntax.md#syntax-string-literal).
- `pattern` — String, regexp expression, must be constant. [String](../../sql-reference/syntax.md#syntax-string-literal).
- `index` An integer number greater or equal 0 with default 1. It represents which regex group to extract. [UInt or Int](../../sql-reference/data-types/int-uint.md). Optional.
**Returned values**
`pattern` may contain multiple regexp groups, `index` indicates which regex group to extract. An index of 0 means matching the entire regular expression.
Type: `String`.
**Examples**
``` sql
SELECT
regexpExtract('100-200', '(\\d+)-(\\d+)', 1),
regexpExtract('100-200', '(\\d+)-(\\d+)', 2),
regexpExtract('100-200', '(\\d+)-(\\d+)', 0),
regexpExtract('100-200', '(\\d+)-(\\d+)');
```
Result:
``` text
┌─regexpExtract('100-200', '(\\d+)-(\\d+)', 1)─┬─regexpExtract('100-200', '(\\d+)-(\\d+)', 2)─┬─regexpExtract('100-200', '(\\d+)-(\\d+)', 0)─┬─regexpExtract('100-200', '(\\d+)-(\\d+)')─┐
│ 100 │ 200 │ 100-200 │ 100 │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
## hasSubsequence
Returns 1 if needle is a subsequence of haystack, or 0 otherwise.
A subsequence of a string is a sequence that can be derived from the given string by deleting zero or more elements without changing the order of the remaining elements.
**Syntax**
``` sql
hasSubsequence(haystack, needle)
```
**Arguments**
- `haystack` — String in which the search is performed. [String](../../sql-reference/syntax.md#syntax-string-literal).
- `needle` — Subsequence to be searched. [String](../../sql-reference/syntax.md#syntax-string-literal).
**Returned values**
- 1, if needle is a subsequence of haystack.
- 0, otherwise.
Type: `UInt8`.
**Examples**
``` sql
SELECT hasSubsequence('garbage', 'arg') ;
```
Result:
``` text
┌─hasSubsequence('garbage', 'arg')─┐
│ 1 │
└──────────────────────────────────┘
```
## hasSubsequenceCaseInsensitive
Like [hasSubsequence](#hasSubsequence) but searches case-insensitively.
## hasSubsequenceUTF8
Like [hasSubsequence](#hasSubsequence) but assumes `haystack` and `needle` are UTF-8 encoded strings.
## hasSubsequenceCaseInsensitiveUTF8
Like [hasSubsequenceUTF8](#hasSubsequenceUTF8) but searches case-insensitively.