[RESOLVED] select * with one filed showing only 10

[rooky]

Hi
How do i select all fields from a table and have one of the fields just display the first 10 characters of information

eg. SELECT * FROM RECRUITMENT ". " AND LEFT(description,10) WHERE jobtitle LIKE '$jobtitle' AND salary BETWEEN '$minimum' AND '$maximum'";
//$jobtitile and $min and $max are form variables

description is a text field in table recruitment in which i want to display only the first 10 characters

I have tried the above but this does not work

please help

Rooky

[thorpe]

You'll need to specify each field individually. Using * is an inoficient method anyhow.

SELECT a, b, LEFT(c,10), d FROM tbl;

Should work fine. Your above use of the AND clause is way off.

[bradgrafelman]

Yeah, unless you absolutely need to use every single column in the table, do not use a SELECT *. Too inefficient, as thorpe almost said :p

Instead, use a comma-delimited list of column names (including MySQL functions, such as LEFT()) as thorpe suggested. When doing so, if you have a column name that is ambiguous due to a reserved MySQL keyword (such as if you had a column called 'where'), surround the column name in backticks. As a safe practice, I just surround the columns (and database names) in backticks all the time, like so:

SELECT `a`, `b`, LEFT(`c`, 10), `d` FROM `tbl`;

[rooky]

thats brilliant

thanks so much for your help

works well now!!

rooky
🙂

[bradgrafelman]

Don't forget to mark the thread resolved.