Thread: yet another simple SQL question

yet another simple SQL question

From
Joshua
Date:
Ok,

You guys must be getting sick of these newbie questions, but I can't
resist since I am learning a lot from these email lists and getting
results quick! Thanks to everyone for their contributions.

Here is my questions....

I have a column that looks like this

firstname
-----------------
John B
Mark A
Jennifer D

Basically I have the first name followed by a middle initial. Is there a
quick command I can run to strip the middle initial? Basically, I just
need to delete the middle initial so the column would then look like the
following:

firstname
---------------
John
Mark
Jennifer

Thanks again for all of your help today. Everything you guys have been
sending has produced successful results.

Thanks.

Re: yet another simple SQL question

From
Erik Jones
Date:
On Jun 25, 2007, at 12:44 PM, Joshua wrote:

> Ok,
>
> You guys must be getting sick of these newbie questions, but I
> can't resist since I am learning a lot from these email lists and
> getting results quick! Thanks to everyone for their contributions.
>
> Here is my questions....
>
> I have a column that looks like this
>
> firstname
> -----------------
> John B
> Mark A
> Jennifer D
>
> Basically I have the first name followed by a middle initial. Is
> there a quick command I can run to strip the middle initial?
> Basically, I just need to delete the middle initial so the column
> would then look like the following:
>
> firstname
> ---------------
> John
> Mark
> Jennifer
>
> Thanks again for all of your help today. Everything you guys have
> been sending has produced successful results.
>

Try something along the lines of:


SELECT substring(firstname from '^(\w*)\W') from table_name;


Erik Jones

Software Developer | Emma®
erik@myemma.com
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