TO_VARBYTE function - Amazon Redshift
SyntaxArgumentsReturn typeExamples

TO_VARBYTE function

TO_VARBYTE converts a string in a specified format to a binary value.

Syntax

TO_VARBYTE(string, format)

Arguments

string

A CHAR or VARCHAR string.

format

The format of the input string. Case insensitive valid values are hex, binary, utf8 (also utf-8 and utf_8), and base64.

Return type

VARBYTE

Examples

To convert the hex 6162 to a binary value, use the following example. The result is automatically shown as the hexadecimal representation of the binary value.

SELECT TO_VARBYTE('6162', 'hex');
               
+------------+
| to_varbyte |
+------------+
|       6162 |
+------------+

To return the binary representation of 4d, use the following example. The binary representation of '4d' is 01001101.

SELECT TO_VARBYTE('01001101', 'binary');
               
+------------+
| to_varbyte |
+------------+
|         4d |
+------------+

To convert the string 'a' in UTF-8 to a binary value, use the following example. The result is automatically shown as the hexadecimal representation of the binary value.

SELECT TO_VARBYTE('a', 'utf8');
               
+------------+
| to_varbyte |
+------------+
|         61 |
+------------+

To convert the string '4' in hexadecimal to a binary value, use the following example. If the hexadecimal string length is an odd number, then a 0 is prepended to form a valid hexadecimal number.

SELECT TO_VARBYTE('4', 'hex');
               
+------------+
| to_varbyte |
+------------+
|         04 |
+------------+