How get all matching positions in a string? - sql

Question

I have a column flag_acumu in a table in PostgreSQL with values like:
'SSNSSNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNSNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN'
I need to show all positions with an 'S'. With this code, I only get the first such position, but not the later ones.
SELECT codn_conce, flag_acumu, position('S' IN flag_acumu) AS the_pos
FROM dh12
WHERE position('S' IN flag_acumu) != 0
ORDER BY the_pos ASC;
How to get all of them?

Answer 1

In Postgres 9.4 or later you can conveniently use unnest() in combination with WITH ORDINALITY:
SELECT *
FROM dh12 d
JOIN unnest(string_to_array(d.flag_acumu, NULL))
WITH ORDINALITY u(elem, the_pos) ON u.elem = 'S'
WHERE d.flag_acumu LIKE '%S%' -- optional, see below
ORDER BY d.codn_conce, u.the_pos;
This returns one row per match.
WHERE d.flag_acumu LIKE '%S%' is optional to quickly eliminate source rows without any matches. Pays if there are more than a few such rows.
Detailed explanation and alternatives for older versions:
PostgreSQL unnest() with element number

Answer 2

Since you didn't specify your needs to a point in which one could answer properly, I'm going with my assumption that you want a list of positions of occurence of a substring (can be more than 1 character long).
Here's the function to do that using:
FOR .. LOOP control structure,
function substr(text, int, int).
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION get_all_positions_of_substring(text, text)
RETURNS text
STABLE
STRICT
LANGUAGE plpgsql
AS $$
DECLARE
output_text TEXT := '';
BEGIN
FOR i IN 1..length($1)
LOOP
IF substr($1, i, length($2)) = $2 THEN
output_text := CONCAT(output_text, ';', i);
END IF;
END LOOP;
-- Remove first semicolon
output_text := substr(output_text, 2, length(output_text));
RETURN output_text;
END;
$$;
Sample call and output
postgres=# select * from get_all_positions_of_substring('soklesocmxsoso','so');
get_all_positions_of_substring
--------------------------------
1;6;11;13

Answer 3

This works too. And a bit faster I think.
create or replace function findAllposition(_pat varchar, _tar varchar)
returns int[] as
$body$
declare _poslist int[]; _pos int;
begin
_pos := position(_pat in _tar);
while (_pos>0)
loop
if array_length(_poslist,1) is null then
_poslist := _poslist || (_pos);
else
_poslist := _poslist || (_pos + _poslist[array_length(_poslist,1)] + 1);
end if;
_tar := substr(_tar, _pos + 1, length(_tar));
_pos := position(_pat in _tar);
end loop;
return _poslist;
end;
$body$
language plpgsql;
Will return a position list which is an int array.
{position1, position2, position3, etc.}