I'm asking about the possibility of indexing portions of a column's value where the column has a static field format. Example, a char(8) which contains all hex values (basically a hex number that's always 8 chars wide, leading zeros if needed). Someone might want to select all recs where the first 2 digits are 'ff' or maybe the last 4 hex digits match regexp_match '00[cdef]{2}' or maybe a match of the entire string... "0dd63a87".
If I know the placement and width of the fields that need to be indexed, can indices be defined to facilitate queries ? Example... - match all 8 chars - match the 3rd and 4th chars - match the last 4 chars I suppose I could fragment the thing into multiple columns for the purposes of a search. So add a column called "last4" as a char(4) that matches the last 4 chars of that column. Then index that. etc... But inquiring to see if there is something more elegant. Thanks !