contains

Input Stack: value: String key: String

⇨

Output Stack: Query

Select time series where the value for a tag key contains the specified substring anywhere within the value. This provides a more efficient alternative to regular expressions when you only need simple substring matching. It performs exact substring matching and is case-sensitive.

Parameters

• key: The tag key to check (e.g., name, nf.app)
• value: The substring that must appear anywhere within tag values

Examples

Find all metrics whose name contains "Cpu":

name,Cpu,:contains

When matching against sample data, the highlighted time series would be included:

Name	nf.app	nf.node
ssCpuUser	alerttest	i-0123
ssCpuSystem	alerttest	i-0123
ssCpuUser	nccp	i-0abc
ssCpuSystem	nccp	i-0abc
numRequests	nccp	i-0abc
ssCpuUser	api	i-0456

Related Operations

• :starts - Match by prefix only
• :ends - Match by suffix only
• :eq - Exact string matching
• :re - Full regular expression matching (more powerful but slower)
• :and / :or - Combine with other query conditions