Return n characters of a field

[bopritchard]

i want to return a portion of a field ...

for instance...i only want to display 50 characters of a text field

 

[piti]

select left(string_column, 50) from your_table

as it in the mysql doc -

http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/String_functions.html

LEFT(str,len)
Returns the leftmost len characters from the string str:
mysql> SELECT LEFT('foobarbar', 5);
-> 'fooba'