How to get first n elements in an array in Hive

Question

I use split function to create an array in Hive, how can I get the first n elements from the array, and I want to go through the sub-array

code example

select col1 from table
where split(col2, ',')[0:5] 

'[0:5]'looks likes python style, but it doesn't work here.

Answer 1

This is a tricky one.
First grab the brickhouse jar from here
Then add it to Hive : add jar /path/to/jars/brickhouse-0.7.0-SNAPSHOT.jar;

Now create the two functions we will be usings :

CREATE TEMPORARY FUNCTION array_index AS 'brickhouse.udf.collect.ArrayIndexUDF';
CREATE TEMPORARY FUNCTION numeric_range AS 'brickhouse.udf.collect.NumericRange';

The query will be :

select a, n as array_index, array_index(split(a,','),n) as value_from_Array from ( select "abc#1,def#2,hij#3" a from dual union all select "abc#1,def#2,hij#3,zzz#4" a from dual) t1 lateral view numeric_range( length(a)-length(regexp_replace(a,',',''))+1 ) n1 as n

Explained :
select "abc#1,def#2,hij#3" a from dual union all select "abc#1,def#2,hij#3,zzz#4" a from dual

Is just selecting some test data, in your case replace this with your table name.

lateral view numeric_range( length(a)-length(regexp_replace(a,',',''))+1 ) n1 as n

numeric_range is a UDTF that returns a table for a given range, in this case, i asked for a range between 0 (default) and the number of elements in string (calculated as the number of commas + 1)
This way, each row will be multiplied by the number of elements in the given column.

array_index(split(a,','),n)

This is exactly like using split(a,',')[n] but hive doesn't support it.
So we get the n-th element for each duplicated row of the initial string resulting in :

abc#1,def#2,hij#3,zzz#4 0 abc#1 abc#1,def#2,hij#3,zzz#4 1 def#2 abc#1,def#2,hij#3,zzz#4 2 hij#3 abc#1,def#2,hij#3,zzz#4 3 zzz#4 abc#1,def#2,hij#3 0 abc#1 abc#1,def#2,hij#3 1 def#2 abc#1,def#2,hij#3 2 hij#3

If you really want a specific number of elements (say 5) then just use :
lateral view numeric_range(5 ) n1 as n

Answer 2

This is a much simpler way of doing it. There is a UDF here called TruncateArrayUDF.javathat can do what you are asking. Just clone the repo from the main page and build the jar with Maven.

Example Data:

|       col1         |
----------------------
  1,2,3,4,5,6,7
  11,12,13,14,15,16,17

Query:

add jar /complete/path/to/jar/brickhouse-0.7.0-SNAPSHOT.jar;
create temporary function trunc as 'brickhouse.udf.collect.TruncateArrayUDF';

select pos
      ,newcol
from (
      select trunc(split(col1, '\\,'), 5) as p
      from table
     ) x
lateral view posexplode(p) explodetable as pos, newcol

Output:

  pos  |  newcol  |
-------------------
  0         1
  1         2
  2         3
  3         4
  4         5
  0         11
  1         12
  2         13
  3         14
  4         15