Hi,
Suppose I need to split a string on a delimiter and select one of the
resulting components. If I want a specific component counting from the
start, that's easy:
split_part('foo bar baz', ' ', 1) -> 'foo'
But if I want the last component, I have several less-than-ideal options:
1. (string_to_array('foo bar baz', '
'))[cardinality(string_to_array('foo bar baz', ' ')) - 1]
2. reverse(split_part(reverse('foo bar baz'), ' ', 1))
3. (regexp_match('foo baz bar', '\S*$'))[1]
Option 1 is probably the most understandable, especially if you are
willing to introduce a temporary parts array:
select parts[cardinality(parts) - 1] from string_to_array('foo bar
baz', ' ') parts
But if the strings are long, this needlessly builds an array just to
throw it away. Option 2 has similar efficiency problems and is just
kind of silly. Option 3 is probably the best, but it's still a good
bit more complicated than a simple split_part invocation.
Is there another option I'm missing? Would there be interest in
extending split part so that negative indices counted from the end, as
in:
split_part('foo bar baz', ' ', -1) -> 'baz'
Or adding a split_part_end function in which positive indices counted
from the end:
split_part_end('foo bar baz', ' ', 1) -> 'baz'
I'd be happy to prepare a patch if so.
Cheers,
Nikhil
