This function takes an integer n and a text sequence, then splits the sequence into overlapping contiguous subsequences of length n.

​
Syntax

NGRAM( <n>, <text> )

​
Parameters

ParameterDescriptionDatatype
<n>An integer specifying the length of each n-gram.INTEGER
<text>The text sequence to split into n-grams.TEXT

​
Return Types

ARRAY(TEXT)
  • If any of the inputs is nullable, the result type is ARRAY(TEXT) NULL.

​
Behavior

The function splits the input text into overlapping contiguous subsequences of length n.
  • If n is smaller than the size of the input text, an array containing the single value of the input text is returned.
  • If n is smaller than 1, an error is thrown.
  • If any input is NULL, the result is NULL regardless of the other input value.

​
Errors

An error is thrown if n is smaller than 1.

​
Respect/Ignore Nulls

Propagates nulls: If any input is NULL, the result is NULL.

​
Examples

The following example generates 2-grams (bigrams) from the string ‘hello world’: 
SELECT NGRAM(2, 'hello world') AS result;
result (ARRAY(TEXT))
{he,el,ll,lo,"o "," w",wo,or,rl,ld}
The following example generates 3-grams (trigrams) from the string ‘hello world’: 
SELECT NGRAM(3, 'hello world') AS result;
result (ARRAY(TEXT))
{hel,ell,llo,"lo ","o w"," wo",wor,orl,rld}
The following example generates 1-grams (unigrams) from the string ‘hello’: 
SELECT NGRAM(1, 'hello') AS result;
result (ARRAY(TEXT))
{h,e,l,l,o}
The following example generates 10-grams from the string ‘hi’. Since the string length matches the n-gram size, the result contains the entire string: 
SELECT NGRAM(10, 'hi') AS result;
result (ARRAY(TEXT))
{hi}
The following example uses an n-gram size of 0, which is invalid and throws an error: 
SELECT NGRAM(0, 'hi') AS result;
ERROR: Line 1, Column 8: Invalid n-gram size: 0. Must be greater than 0. Choose an n-gram size larger than 0 or NULL. The following example uses a negative n-gram size, which is invalid and throws an error: 
SELECT NGRAM(-1, 'hi') AS result;
ERROR: Line 1, Column 8: Invalid n-gram size: -1. Must be greater than 0. Choose an n-gram size larger than 0 or NULL. The following example generates 2-grams (bigrams) from the Japanese string ‘こんにちは’: 
SELECT NGRAM(2, 'こんにちは') AS result;
result (ARRAY(TEXT))
{こん,んに,にち,ちは}
The following example generates 2-grams (bigrams) from the string of emojis ’😊👍🎉‘: 
SELECT NGRAM(2, '😊👍🎉') AS result;
result (ARRAY(TEXT))
{😊👍,👍🎉}