LOCATE

The LOCATE function returns the starting position of the first occurrence of one string (called the search-string) within another string (called the source-string). If the search-string is not found and neither argument is null, the result is zero. If the search-string is found, the result is a number from 1 to the actual length of the source-string. If the optional start is specified, it indicates the character position in the source-string at which the search is to begin.

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>>-LOCATE--(--search-string--,--source-string--+----------+--)-><
                                               '-,--start-'      

search-string
An expression that specifies the string that is to be searched for. search-string may be any built-in numeric or string expression. It must be compatible with the source-string. A numeric argument is cast to a character string before evaluating the function. For more information about converting numeric to a character string, see VARCHAR.
source-string
An expression that specifies the source string in which the search is to take place. source-string may be any built-in numeric or string expression. A numeric argument is cast to a character string before evaluating the function. For more information about converting numeric to a character string, see VARCHAR.
start
An expression that specifies the position within source-string at which the search is to start. It must be an integer.

If start is specified, the function is similar to:

  POSITION( SUBSTRING(source-string,start) , search-string ) + start - 1

If start is not specified, the function is equivalent to:

  POSITION( source-string , search-string )

For more information, see POSITION.

The result of the function is a large integer. If any of the arguments can be null, the result can be null; if any of the arguments is null, the result is the null value.

Start of changeThe LOCATE function operates on a character basis. Because LOCATE operates on a character-string basis, any shift-in and shift-out characters are not required to be in exactly the same position and their only significance is to indicate which characters are SBCS and which characters are DBCS.End of change

If the CCSID of the search-string is different than the CCSID of the source-string, it is converted to the CCSID of the source-string.

If a collating sequence other than *HEX is in effect when the statement that contains the LOCATE function is executed and the arguments are SBCS data, mixed data, or Unicode data, then the result is obtained by comparing weighted values for each value in the set. The weighted values are based on the collating sequence. An ICU collating sequence table may not be specified with the LOCATE function.

Example