Working with REVERSE in Postgres

06.15.2022

Intro

PostgreSQL provides the REVERSE function to invert the order of the characters in a string. In this article, we will learn how to use REVERSE in PostgreSQL.

The Syntax

The basic syntax of a REVERSE is as follows:

SELECT REVERSE(string_name);
  • string is the string to reverse

Getting Setup

We will be using docker in this article, but feel free to install your database locally instead. Once you have docker installed, create a new file called docker-compose.yml and add the following.

version: '3'
 
services:
  db:
    image: 'postgres:latest'
    ports:
      - 5432:5432
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: username
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: password
      POSTGRES_DB: default_database
    volumes:
      - psqldata:/var/lib/postgresql

  phpmyadmin:
    image: phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
    links:
      - db
    environment:
      PMA_HOST: db
      PMA_PORT: 3306
      PMA_ARBITRARY: 1
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8081:80

volumes:
  psqldata:

Next, run docker-compose up.

Now, navigate to http://localhost:8081/ to access phpMyAdmin. Then log in with the username root and pass root_pass.

Click the SQL tab and you are ready to go.

A Simple Example

The reverse function is pretty straight forward, we simply reverse any varchar type. Here is the example.

SELECT reverse('hello world') as res;
res
dlrow olleh