Question

I have a column called names that has inputs like the following:

`name`  
Aaron, James
Aberer, Leo
A.J.
A., Narayana Rao
Abbot Jr., Greg

I want to change the formatting such that the first name will come first, this is how it needs to be:

`name`
James Aaron
Leo Aberer
A.J.
Narayana Rao A.
Greg Abbot Jr.

How would I do this directly in mysql?

Answer 1

You can use this solution:

SELECT 
    CASE WHEN INSTR(name, ',') > 0 
        THEN TRIM(CONCAT(SUBSTRING_INDEX(name, ',', -1), ' ', SUBSTRING_INDEX(name, ',', 1))) 
    ELSE name END AS name_formatted
FROM tbl

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SQLFiddle Demo