There is no redshift inbuilt function to strip a character from start-end of a string. For eg. if a numeric value is stored as a character with preceding zeros ' 0000123' and you want to store/operate/aggregate/join it as a number it is not possible with inbuilt redshift functions. What you can do is to create the following strip udfs and make a use of these. lstrip : strips out the left instances of a character from a string. CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION public.fn_lstrip(str_in character varying, a character) RETURNS character varying AS ' try: return(str_in.lstrip(a)) except: return None' LANGUAGE plpythonu VOLATILE; eg. select public.fn_lstrip('00001234','0') would result in 12345 rstrip : strips out the right instances of a character from a string. CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION public.fn_rstrip(str_in character varying, a character) RETURNS character varying AS ' try: return(str_in.rstrip(a)) except: return None&