Question

Consider the following table:

ticker  code
--------------
AA      151040
AAP     452020
DOW     151010
DVN     151020
EXC     452050
FAD     452070
POE     207010

I would like to select the tickers per code – but comparison has to be made on only the first four numbers of the code (so: 1510, 4520, 1510, etc), giving a result like:

1510 AA
1510 DOW
1510 DVN
4520 AAP
4520 EXC
4520 FAD
2070 POE

With what query can I take only the first four numbers?

Answer 1

Use LEFT:

SELECT LEFT(code, 4) AS code, ticker FROM tbl ORDER BY code;