MySQL Select Query - Get only first 10 characters of a value

getvivekv picture getvivekv · Feb 19, 2013 · Viewed 244.3k times · Source

Ok, so here is the issue.

I have a table with some columns and 'subject' is one of the columns. I need to get the first 10 letters from the 'subject' field no matter the 'subject' field contains a string with 100 letters.

For example,

Table - tbl. Columns - id, subject, value.

SQL Query:

SELECT subject FROM tbl WHERE id ='$id';

The result I am getting is, for example

Hello, this is my subject and how are you

I only require the first 10 characters

Hello, thi

I can understand that I can remove the rest of the characters using php substr() but that's not possible in my case. I need to get the excess characters removed by MySQL. How can this be done?

Answer

MuhammadHani picture MuhammadHani · Feb 19, 2013

Using the below line

SELECT LEFT(subject , 10) FROM tbl 

MySQL Doc.