Question

I am running the following query on a table, which splits the first name and last name of each person in the Name column of the table into Firstname and Lastname:

SELECT SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(Name, ' ', 1), ' ', -1) as Firstname,
       SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(Name, ' ', 2), ' ', -1) as Lastname
FROM   conference;

This works fine. I would now like to add the results of this to two new columns in the table which I have called Firstname and Lastname.

I tried adding INSERT conference [Firstname, Lastname] to the start of the Query, but that generated an error. Could someone help with the correct way of doing this?

Thanks,

Nick

Answer 1

If your intent is to update existing rows with those new fields instead of inserting new records, this should work

UPDATE Conference 
SET 
   Firstname = SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(Name, ' ', 1), ' ', -1),
   Lastname = SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(Name, ' ', 2), ' ', -1)