GETRANGE(3valkey)

💖 getrange — okay bestie, let's talk substrings 💖

So this is GETRANGE, a command from the Valkey Command Manual (that's the 3valkey manual, section 3, the library/command-call section, iykyk 🫶). It returns a substring of the string stored at a key. That's it. That's the vibe. Slay.

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

GETRANGE key start end

---

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

GETRANGE gives you back the substring of the string value sitting at key, and you pick which chunk you want with the offsets start and end. Heads up: both of those are inclusive, so end is genuinely included, not a "stop before this" situation. Inclusive. Both of them. Periodt. 💅

And the cute part? You can use negative offsets, which count backwards from the end of the string instead of the front. So:

• -1 is literally the last character
• -2 is the penultimate one
• and so on and so forth, all the way down the line

If you ask for something that's out of range, don't panic — the function just handles it for you by limiting the resulting range to the actual length of the string. No errors, no drama, just a smaller substring than you asked for. It's giving "we'll work with what we have." 😌

---

📬 REPLY 📬

A bulk string reply in the valkey-protocol(7) sense — specifically, the substring of the string value stored at key, determined by the offsets start and end (both inclusive, again, always inclusive).

---

🔥 COMPLEXITY 🔥

It's O(N), where N is the length of the returned string.

Okay but here's the nuance, bestie: the complexity is ultimately determined by the returned length. However — and this is the fun bit — because creating a substring from an existing string is very cheap, it can be considered O(1) for small strings. So it's not scary, it's just honest about scaling. ✨

---

👑 ACL CATEGORIES 👑

@read @slow @string

---

🦋 HISTORY 🦋

• Available since: 2.4.0 — an elder, an icon, a legend, no cap.

---

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

127.0.0.1:6379> SET mykey "This is a string"
OK
127.0.0.1:6379> GETRANGE mykey 0 3
"This"
127.0.0.1:6379> GETRANGE mykey -3 -1
"ing"
127.0.0.1:6379> GETRANGE mykey 0 -1
"This is a string"
127.0.0.1:6379> GETRANGE mykey 10 100
"string"

Look at that last one 🥹 — asked for 10 to 100 on a string that's way shorter than that, and it just quietly gave back "string". Out-of-range handling, main character energy.

---

🎀 SEE ALSO 🎀

append(3valkey), decr(3valkey), decrby(3valkey), delifeq(3valkey), get(3valkey), getdel(3valkey), getex(3valkey), getset(3valkey), incr(3valkey), incrby(3valkey), incrbyfloat(3valkey), lcs(3valkey), mget(3valkey), mset(3valkey), msetnx(3valkey), psetex(3valkey), set(3valkey), setex(3valkey), setnx(3valkey), setrange(3valkey), strlen(3valkey), substr(3valkey)

---

Okay that's the whole page, bestie!! 💜 This was version 9.0.0, dated 2025-10-21, straight from the GETRANGE(3valkey) manual. Go forth and slice your strings, you absolute legend. 🫶✨