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TO_VARBYTE function - Amazon Redshift
SyntaxArgumentsReturn typeExamples

Amazon Redshift will no longer support the use of Python UDFs after June 30, 2026. We will start enforcing it in phases. For more information on the details of Python end of life and migration options, see the blog post that was published on June 30, 2025.

TO_VARBYTE function

TO_VARBYTE converts a string in a specified format to a binary value.

Syntax

TO_VARBYTE(string, format)

Arguments

string

A CHAR or VARCHAR string.

format

The format of the input string. Case insensitive valid values are hex, binary, utf8 (also utf-8 and utf_8), and base64.

Return type

VARBYTE

Examples

To convert the hex 6162 to a binary value, use the following example. The result is automatically shown as the hexadecimal representation of the binary value.

SELECT TO_VARBYTE('6162', 'hex');
               
+------------+
| to_varbyte |
+------------+
|       6162 |
+------------+

To return the binary representation of 4d, use the following example. The binary representation of '4d' is 01001101.

SELECT TO_VARBYTE('01001101', 'binary');
               
+------------+
| to_varbyte |
+------------+
|         4d |
+------------+

To convert the string 'a' in UTF-8 to a binary value, use the following example. The result is automatically shown as the hexadecimal representation of the binary value.

SELECT TO_VARBYTE('a', 'utf8');
               
+------------+
| to_varbyte |
+------------+
|         61 |
+------------+

To convert the string '4' in hexadecimal to a binary value, use the following example. If the hexadecimal string length is an odd number, then a 0 is prepended to form a valid hexadecimal number.

SELECT TO_VARBYTE('4', 'hex');
               
+------------+
| to_varbyte |
+------------+
|         04 |
+------------+