I know I’m close to figuring this out but need a little help. What I’m trying to do is all grab a column from a particular table, but chop off the first 4 characters. For example if in a column the value is “KPIT08L”, the result I was is 08L. Here is what I have so far but not getting the desired results.
SELECT LEFT(FIELD_NAME, 4)
FROM TABLE_NAME
First up,
leftwill give you the leftmost characters. If you want the characters starting at a specific location, you need to look intomid:Secondly, if you value performance,portability and scalability at all, this sort of “sub-column” manipulation should generally be avoided. It’s usually far easier (and faster) to patch columns together than to split them apart.
In other words, keep the first four characters in their own column and the rest in a separate column, and do your selects on the relevant one. If you’re using anything less than a full column, then it’s technically not one attribute of the row.