PostgreSQL: How to Select Last N Characters in a String

Often in PostgreSQL you may want to extract the last N characters in a string field.

You can use the following syntax to do so:

SELECT RIGHT(team, 3) AS last_three
FROM athletes;

This particular example will extract the last three characters from each string in the team column of the table named athletes.

The resulting substring will be saved to a new column named last_three.

To select a different number of characters from the end of a string, simply change the 3 in the RIGHT function to a different number.

The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.

Example: How to Select Last N Characters in a String in PostgreSQL

Suppose that we create the following table named athletes that contains information about various basketball teams:

-- create table named 'athletes'
CREATE TABLE athletes (
  athleteID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
  team TEXT,
  points INTEGER,
  assists INTEGER
);

-- add rows to the table 
INSERT INTO athletes VALUES (0001, 'Mavs', 22, 5);
INSERT INTO athletes VALUES (0002, 'Hawks', 30, 12);
INSERT INTO athletes VALUES (0003, 'Kings', 12, 3);
INSERT INTO athletes VALUES (0004, 'Kings', 25, 9);
INSERT INTO athletes VALUES (0005, 'Mavs', 31, 14);
INSERT INTO athletes VALUES (0006, 'Mavs', 16, 3);
INSERT INTO athletes VALUES (0007, 'Celtics', 10, 5);
INSERT INTO athletes VALUES (0008, 'Celtics', 14, 13);
INSERT INTO athletes VALUES (0009, 'Nuggets', 20, 8);
INSERT INTO athletes VALUES (0010, 'Hawks', 26, 3);

-- view all rows in table
SELECT * FROM athletes;

 athleteid |  team   | points | assists 
-----------+---------+--------+---------
         1 | Mavs    |     22 |       5
         2 | Hawks   |     30 |      12
         3 | Kings   |     12 |       3
         4 | Kings   |     25 |       9
         5 | Mavs    |     31 |      14
         6 | Mavs    |     16 |       3
         7 | Celtics |     10 |       5
         8 | Celtics |     14 |      13
         9 | Nuggets |     20 |       8
        10 | Hawks   |     26 |       3

Suppose that we would like to extract the last three characters from each string in the team column.

We can use the following syntax to do so:

SELECT team,
       RIGHT(team, 3) AS last_three
FROM athletes;

  team   | last_three 
---------+------------
 Mavs    | avs
 Hawks   | wks
 Kings   | ngs
 Kings   | ngs
 Mavs    | avs
 Mavs    | avs
 Celtics | ics
 Celtics | ics
 Nuggets | ets
 Hawks   | wks

Notice that the resulting table contains a new column named last_three that contains the last three characters from each string in the team column.

Feel free to use similar syntax to select the last N characters from a string field in your own table.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in PostgreSQL:

PostgreSQL: Extract Substring Before Specific Character
PostgreSQL: Extract Substring After Specific Character
PostgreSQL: How to Extract Substring Between Two Characters