RIGHT

Return the rightmost n characters of the input string.

Category: stringReturns: VARCHARDialect: Standard

Syntax

RIGHT(str, n)

Description

## Overview Returns the rightmost `n` characters of the input string. RIGHT is the mirror of LEFT and provides a concise way to extract a suffix of fixed length. Common uses include reading the last four digits of an identifier, extracting a file extension, and slicing a trailing checksum. RIGHT supports a negative-length idiom: RIGHT(s, -k) returns everything except the first `k` characters, useful for stripping a known-length prefix such as 'https://' or a country code. ## Behavior - Returns NULL when the input string is NULL. - Returns NULL when `n` is NULL. - If `n` is 0, returns an empty string. - If `n` is greater than or equal to the character length of the string, returns the full string. - If `n` is negative, returns all characters except the first |n|. If |n| is greater than the string length, returns an empty string. - Counts Unicode code points, so multi-byte UTF-8 characters each count as one position. - Never raises an error for out-of-range `n`. ## Compatibility - Widely supported across SQL dialects with the same positive-n semantics. - The negative-n convention is equivalent to SUBSTRING(str, |n| + 1, CHAR_LENGTH(str)).

Parameters

Name	Type	Description
`str`		Specifies the input string from which trailing characters are extracted.
`n`		Specifies the number of characters to return from the right. Values greater than the string length return the full string. Negative values return all but the first \|n\| characters. Zero returns an empty string.

Examples

-- Last 3 characters
SELECT RIGHT('hello', 3);  -- 'llo'

-- n greater than length returns the full string
SELECT RIGHT('hi', 10);  -- 'hi'

-- Zero returns empty string
SELECT RIGHT('hello', 0);  -- ''

-- Negative n excludes the first |n| characters
SELECT RIGHT('hello', -2);  -- 'llo'

-- Get the last 4 digits of a card number column (for masking display)
SELECT RIGHT(card_last4_raw, 4) AS last4
FROM retail.customers.profiles;

-- NULL propagates
SELECT RIGHT(CAST(NULL AS VARCHAR), 3);  -- NULL

Pitfalls

RIGHT counts characters, not bytes. For byte-accurate trailing slices on binary data, use a binary substring instead.
Negative n is a subtract-from-start idiom, not an error. Passing -1 by mistake returns everything except the first character, which can silently corrupt downstream keys.
RIGHT does not understand file-extension boundaries. RIGHT('archive.tar.gz', 3) returns 'gz', not 'tar.gz'. Use SPLIT_PART or SUBSTRING_INDEX for dot-delimited extraction.
RIGHT(col, n) in a WHERE clause usually prevents index use on col. Consider a generated suffix column if this filter is hot.