Skip to main content
Version: 3.2

translate

Description​

Substitutes specified characters within a string. It works by taking a string (source) as the input and replaces the from_string characters in source with to_string.

This function is supported from v3.2.

Syntax​

TRANSLATE(source, from_string, to_string)

Parameters​

  • source: supports the VARCHAR type. The source string to be translated. If a character in the source is not found in from_string, it is simply included in the result string.

  • from_string: supports the VARCHAR type. Each character in from_string is either replaced by its corresponding character in the to_string, or if there is no corresponding character (i.e. if to_string has fewer characters than the from_string, the character is excluded from the result string). See Examples 2 and 3. If a character appears multiple times in from_string, only its first occurrence is effective. See Example 5.

  • to_string: supports the VARCHAR type. The string used to replace characters. If more characters are specified in to_string than in the from_string argument, extra characters from to_string are ignored. See Example 4.

Return value​

Returns a value of the VARCHAR type.

Scenarios where the result is NULL:

  • Any of the input parameters is NULL.

  • The length of the result string after translation exceeds the maximum length (1048576) of VARCHAR.

Examples​

-- Replace 'ab' in the source string with '12'.
mysql > select translate('abcabc', 'ab', '12') as test;
+--------+
| test   |
+--------+
| 12c12c |
+--------+

-- Replace 'mf1' in the source string with 'to'. 'to' has less characters than 'mf1' and '1' is excluded from the result string.
mysql > select translate('s1m1a1rrfcks','mf1','to') as test;
+-----------+
| test      |
+-----------+
| starrocks |
+-----------+

-- Replace 'ab' in the source string with '1'. '1' has less characters than 'ab' and 'b' is excluded from the result string.
mysql > select translate('abcabc', 'ab', '1') as test;
+------+
| test |
+------+
| 1c1c |
+------+

-- Replace 'ab' in the source string with '123'. '123' has more characters than 'ab' and '3' is ignored.
mysql > select translate('abcabc', 'ab', '123') as test;
+--------+
| test   |
+--------+
| 12c12c |
+--------+

-- Replace 'aba' in the source string with '123'. 'a' appears twice and only the first occurrence of 'a' is replaced.
mysql > select translate('abcabc', 'aba', '123') as test;
+--------+
| test   |
+--------+
| 12c12c |
+--------+

-- Use this function with repeat() and concat(). The result string exceeds the maximum length of VARCHAR and NULL is returned.
mysql > select translate(concat('bcde', repeat('a', 1024*1024-3)), 'a', 'z') as test;
+--------+
| test   |
+--------+
| NULL   |
+--------+

-- Use this function with length(), repeat(), and concat() to calculate the length of the result string.
mysql > select length(translate(concat('bcd', repeat('a', 1024*1024-3)), 'a', 'z')) as test;
+---------+
| test    |
+---------+
| 1048576 |
+---------+

See also​