Expressions passed to this function must have the following data types:
| Expression | Data Types Allowed |
|---|---|
| instring | VARCHAR, CLOB |
| name_to_search | VARCHAR |
| name_delimiters | VARCHAR |
| value_delimiters | VARCHAR |
| occurrence | INTEGER |
The character set of instring, name_to_search, name_delimiters, and value_delimiters can be LATIN or UNICODE. If the parameter character sets are mixed, then all the parameters are converted to UNICODE.
You can also pass arguments with data types that can be converted to the preceding types using the implicit data type conversion rules that apply to UDFs.
The UDF implicit type conversion rules are more restrictive than the implicit type conversion rules typically used by Vantage. An argument that cannot be converted to the required data type following the UDF implicit conversion rules must be explicitly cast.
If a delimiter is part of a longer delimiter, the longer delimiter has precedence in the matching process.
Adjacent delimiters are treated as a single delimiter.