help with data extraction with MySQL

[jairus]

hey everyone i want to extract a block of text, like a comment post but i want to only limit the extraction to a certain amount of characters for viewing. It may look something like this:

"This is a comment post being limited to a certain amount....."

so it cuts it off to that certain amount of characters and then leads off with the dots.....

i'm not pulling the comments off a text file but rather through a MySQL db.

any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks

[Sphynx]

SELECT LEFT(foobar, 50) FROM tbl_name WHERE ....

[jairus]

that doesnt seem to work. here is the sql statement that i am using, title a column within the table:

SELECT *, LEFT(title, 5) FROM $newstable ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 16.

any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks