CHARINDEX()

Signature

CHARINDEX ( expressionToFind , expressionToSearch [ , start_location ] )

Parameters

• expressionToFind — A character expression containing the sequence to find. *expressionToFind* has an 8,000 character limit.
• expressionToSearch — A character expression to search.
• start_location — An integer or bigint expression at which the search starts. If *start_location* isn't specified, has a negative value, or has a zero (`0`) value, the search starts at the beginning of *expressionToSearch*.

Examples

SELECT CHARINDEX('board', 'keyboard') AS position;

position
-----------
          4

SELECT CHARINDEX('is', 'This is a string');

3

SELECT CHARINDEX('is', 'This is a string', 4);

6

Run against SQL Server 16.0.4265.3 on 2026-09-13. This is the output we got, not the documentation’s.

Available on

• SQL Server 2017 and later
• Azure SQL Database
• Azure SQL Managed Instance
• Azure Synapse Analytics
• Analytics Platform System (PDW)
• Microsoft Fabric warehouse
• Fabric SQL database