>

yourstring="123,456,abc"
STREXTRACT( yourstring, ",", "", 3)

>will extract "abc", the last field, in the above example
Sorry, I left out the occurance number, "3". Using my eye as a compiler has it's limits. Yes, you could say this is special case handling for the first and last fields. In the case of the last field you have to know how many fields there are.
Scott

[typo?] As a matter of fact, it won't (it will return 456,abc). But if, as was said in the update, a delimiter is inserted at the start of the string, STREXTRACT() can be generalized: STREXTRACT(","+yourstring,",",",",pairnumber,2).
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