Question

I’ve got a table field membername which contains both the last name and the first name of users. Is it possible to split those into 2 fields memberfirst, memberlast?

All the records have this format “Firstname Lastname” (without quotes and a space in between).

Answer 1

Unfortunately MySQL does not feature a split string function. However you can create a user defined function for this, such as the one described in the following article:

• MySQL Split String Function by Federico Cargnelutti

With that function:

DELIMITER $$

CREATE FUNCTION SPLIT_STR(
  x VARCHAR(255),
  delim VARCHAR(12),
  pos INT
)
RETURNS VARCHAR(255) DETERMINISTIC
BEGIN 
    RETURN REPLACE(SUBSTRING(SUBSTRING_INDEX(x, delim, pos),
       LENGTH(SUBSTRING_INDEX(x, delim, pos -1)) + 1),
       delim, '');
END$$

DELIMITER ;

you would be able to build your query as follows:

SELECT SPLIT_STR(membername, ' ', 1) as memberfirst,
       SPLIT_STR(membername, ' ', 2) as memberlast
FROM   users;

If you prefer not to use a user defined function and you do not mind the query to be a bit more verbose, you can also do the following:

SELECT SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(membername, ' ', 1), ' ', -1) as memberfirst,
       SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(membername, ' ', 2), ' ', -1) as memberlast
FROM   users;