General Character Functions

Table: General Character Functions lists the OLAP DML statements that you use to manipulate text based on characters.

Statement	Description
ASCII	Returns the decimal representation of the first character of an expression.
BLANKSTRIP	Removes leading or trailing blank spaces from text values.
CHANGECHARS	Changes one or more occurrences of a specified string in a text expression to another string.
EXTCHARS	Extracts a portion of a text expression using characters.
FINDCHARS	Returns the character position of the beginning of a specified group of characters within a text expression.
GREATEST	Returns the largest expression in a list of expressions.
INITCAP	Returns a specified text expression, with the first letter of each word in uppercase and all other letters in lowercase.
INSCHARS	Inserts one or more characters into a text expression.
INSTR	Searches a string for a substring using characters and returns the position in the string that is the first character of a specified occurrence of the substring.
JOINCHARS	Joins two or more text values, as characters, as a single line.
LEAST	Returns the smallest expression in a list of expressions.
LIKECASE	Controls whether the LIKE operator is case sensitive.
LIKEESCAPE	An escape character for the LIKE operator.
LOWCASE	Converts all alphabetic characters in a text expression into lowercase.
LPAD	Returns an expression, left-padded to a specified length with the specified characters; or, when the expression to be padded is longer than the length specified after padding, only that portion of the expression that fits into the specified length.
LTRIM	Removes characters from the left of a text expression, with all the leftmost characters that appear in another text expression removed.
MAXCHARS	The number of characters in the longest line of a multiline text expression. The result returned by MAXCHARS has the same dimensions as the specified expression.
NULLIF	Compares one expression with another and returns NA when the expressions are equal, or the base expression when they are not.
NUMCHARS	The number of characters in a text expression.
OBSCURE	Provides two mechanisms for encrypting a single-line text expression. Depending on the mechanism you use, OBSCURE can also restore the encrypted value to its original form.
REMCHARS	Removes one or more characters from a text expression and returns the value that remains.
REPLCHARS	Replaces one or more characters in a text expression.
RPAD	Returns an expression, right-padded to a specified length with the specified characters; or, when the expression to be padded is longer than the length specified after padding, only that portion of the expression that fits into the specified length.
RTRIM	Removes characters from the right of a text expression, with all the rightmost characters that appear in another text expression removed.
SUBSTR	Returns a portion of string, beginning at a specified character position, and a specified number of characters long.
TEXTFILL	Reformats a text value to fit compactly into lines of a specified width, regardless of its current format.
TRIM	Removes leading or trailing characters (or both) from a character string.
UPCASE	Converts all alphabetic characters in a text expression into uppercase.