Character functions

The following table describes the supported character functions.

Function	Description
ascii	Returns the ASCII code for the first character in a string.
char	Returns the character corresponding to an integer code.
char_length	Returns the number of characters in a string.
charindex	Returns the starting position of one string within another.
compare	Compares two strings based on alternate collation rules and returns a comparison integer.
difference	Returns a value representing the difference between two soundex codes.
left	Returns the leftmost characters of a string.
len	Returns the string length excluding trailing spaces.
lower	Converts all uppercase letters to lowercase.
ltrim	Removes leading spaces from a string.
patindex	Returns the starting position of a pattern in a string.
replicate	Repeats a string a specified number of times.
reverse	Returns a string with characters in reverse order.
right	Returns the rightmost characters of a string.
rtrim	Removes trailing spaces.
softkey	Returns a key value for sorting based on collation rules.
soundex	Returns a 4-character soundex code for strings to compare phonetic similarity.
space	Returns a string consisting of a specified number of spaces.
str	Converts a numeric value to a string and pads it to a specified length.
str_replace	Replaces occurrences of a substring with another string.
stuff	Deletes a specified number of characters from a string and inserts another string.
substring	Extracts a substring from a string.
uhighsurr	Returns 1 if the Unicode value at a position is the high half of a surrogate pair; otherwise, 0.
ulowsurr	Returns 1 if the Unicode value at a position is the low half of a surrogate pair; otherwise, 0.
upper	Converts all lowercase characters to uppercase.
uscalar	Returns the Unicode scalar value of the first Unicode character in an expression.
valid_name	Returns 0 if a string is not a valid ID; otherwise, non-zero.

For more information, see SAP ASE functions.