# SPLIT\$1PART function
<a name="SPLIT_PART"></a>

Splits a string on the specified delimiter and returns the part at the specified position.

## Syntax
<a name="SPLIT_PART-synopsis"></a>

```
SPLIT_PART(string, delimiter, position)
```

## Arguments
<a name="SPLIT_PART-arguments"></a>

 *string*   
A string column, expression, or string literal to be split. The string can be CHAR or VARCHAR.

 *delimiter*   
The delimiter string indicating sections of the input *string*.   
If *delimiter* is a literal, enclose it in single quotation marks. 

 *position*   
Position of the portion of *string* to return (counting from 1). Must be an integer greater than 0. If *position* is larger than the number of string portions, SPLIT\$1PART returns an empty string. If *delimiter* is not found in *string*, then the returned value contains the contents of the specified part, which might be the entire *string* or an empty value.

## Return type
<a name="SPLIT_PART-return-type"></a>

A CHAR or VARCHAR string, the same as the *string* parameter.

## Examples
<a name="SPLIT_PART-examples"></a>

The following example splits a string literal into parts using the `$` delimiter and returns the second part.

```
select split_part('abc$def$ghi','$',2)

split_part
----------
def
```

The following example splits a string literal into parts using the `$` delimiter. It returns an empty string because part `4` is not found.

```
select split_part('abc$def$ghi','$',4)

split_part
----------
```

The following example splits a string literal into parts using the `#` delimiter. It returns the entire string, which is the first part, because the delimiter is not found. 

```
select split_part('abc$def$ghi','#',1)

split_part
------------
abc$def$ghi
```

The following example splits the timestamp field LISTTIME into year, month, and day components.

```
select listtime, split_part(listtime,'-',1) as year,
split_part(listtime,'-',2) as month, 
split_part(split_part(listtime,'-',3),' ',1) as day 
from listing limit 5;

      listtime       | year | month | day
---------------------+------+-------+------
 2008-03-05 12:25:29 | 2008 | 03    | 05
 2008-09-09 08:03:36 | 2008 | 09    | 09
 2008-09-26 05:43:12 | 2008 | 09    | 26
 2008-10-04 02:00:30 | 2008 | 10    | 04
 2008-01-06 08:33:11 | 2008 | 01    | 06
```

The following example selects the LISTTIME timestamp field and splits it on the `'-'` character to get the month (the second part of the LISTTIME string), then counts the number of entries for each month:

```
select split_part(listtime,'-',2) as month, count(*)
from listing
group by split_part(listtime,'-',2)
order by 1, 2;

 month | count
-------+-------
    01 | 18543
    02 | 16620
    03 | 17594
    04 | 16822
    05 | 17618
    06 | 17158
    07 | 17626
    08 | 17881
    09 | 17378
    10 | 17756
    11 | 12912
    12 | 4589
```