Substring extraction

[posiedon]

Hi

I wish to select from a column, the names of customers. These names are in the format: "customername-location".

how can i ignore everything after the "-" character and just select the customername section?

i have looked at the substr() function, but as the customername is variable in length, i cannot split the data by a constant number of characters.

Thanks in advance

Stephen

 

[PruSQLer]

Always helps to include what DBMS you're using. So, which is it?

 

[posiedon]

Sorry

I am using Oracle 8.1.7.2

 

[posiedon]

I have managed to find a compound statement to perform what i am looking for:

select SUBSTR( CUSTOMER_SITES.NAME, 0, ((INSTR(CUSTOMER_SITES.NAME, '-', 1,1)) -1))

Is there a simpler way of performing this select??

 

[grega]

Probably not.

Greg.