CHARINDEX function [String]

Returns the position of the first occurrence of a specified string in another string.

CHARINDEX ( string-expression1, string-expression2 )

The statement:

SELECT Surname, GivenName
FROM Employees
WHERE CHARINDEX('K', Surname ) = 1

returns the following values:

All the positions or offsets, returned or specified, in the CHARINDEX function are always character offsets and may be different from the byte offset for multibyte data.

If the string being searched contains more than one instance of the specified string, CHARINDEX returns the position of the first instance.

If the string being searched does not contain the specified string, CHARINDEX returns zero (0).

Searching for a zero-length string returns 1.

If any of the arguments is NULL, the result is NULL.

CHARINDEX returns a 32 bit signed integer position for CHAR and VARCHAR columns.