Is there a SUBSTRING Gremlin?

works without SUBSTRING added

[henry0]

Inspired by a recent post I would like applying a SUBSTRING query to a segment of my admin in order to display only a text sample for ex: the first 100 or 200 characters
I try using the following:
<<<
$result = mysql_query("select topic_id, month, day, year, excerpt, title, user_id, unique_page, SUBSTRING ('main _content',1,100)
from $database_table where topic_id = $last_topic_id",$db)
>>>
I tried with or without quotes and even LEFT and reviewed the manual.
But nothing's working
Do I have a query syntax error?

PS
If I rem the SUBSTRING query it all works fine

Thanks

Henry

[baze22]

First off, I took your query changed it a little to work with a table I already had. Noticed that the single quotes needed to com off of the 'main_content' of your function call. I'd give the result of the function a column name for clarity so it would end up like:

$result = mysql_query("select topic_id, month, day, year, excerpt, title, user_id, unique_page, SUBSTRING (main _content,1,100) as substrvar
from $database_table where topic_id = $last_topic_id",$db) 

baze

[davelms]

Don't know, really. I was looking at the similar discussion yesterday, I had to admit I'd never used this function before (so used PHP myself to achieve the same) but I just tried it on my own site and it seems to work for me:-

SELECT substring( articletext, 1, 6 ) FROM article

Sorry if that's not much use, I just looked at the manual and picked that syntax from one of the user comments attached to the appropriate manual page.

[edit] beaten to it :) must type faster... [/edit]

[ergophobe]

henry0,

if you put the column name in quotes in the SUBSTRING call, it treats that as the string, rather than the data from that column.

If the data in 'my_long_column' is "some comments by henry0"

SUBSTRING('my_long_column', 1, 6)
> 'my_lon'

SUBSTRING(my_long_column, 1, 6)
> 'some c'

[henry0]

Thanks all, got it
Sorry I did not aknowledged your posts earlier
possibly I forgot clicking on notification :)

Henry