Question

I am working with a MySQL database on the CLI which has a few rows that each contain hundreds of characters. I therefore use substring(columnName,1,20) on each one for each query. This is tedious! Is there any directive that I can give so that all queries will run the columns through substring?

Thanks!

Answer 1

CREATE VIEW TableStripped AS
SELECT AcolumnThatDoesntNeedStripping
     , BcolumnThatDoesntNeedStripping
     , ...
     , SUBSTRING(columnA, 1, 20)
     , SUBSTRING(columnB, 1, 20)
     , SUBSTRING(columnC, 1, 20)
     , ...
     , SUBSTRING(columnZ, 1, 20)

and then use that view:

SELECT *
FROM TableStripped