solved---only print some of an entry

[chico1st]

Is there any way to print lets say the first 100 characters of a text entry?
To go along with this is there anyway to check the length of a text entry?
Any help would be GGGGRRRRRREAT!

[fenway]

1. LEFT( yourColumn, 100 )
2. LENGTH( yourColumn)

[chico1st]

these dont seem to work for me... and i cant find them in the either the php or mysql manuals
if im supposed to write them how do i take out one character of a string?

[AndyB]

To elaborate on Fenway's answer about printing 'some' of a field, his method is designed to abstract a defined length of data from a MySQL data field.  Example:

[code]$query = "SELECT left(your_column_name, 100) FROM your_table_name .... "; // retrieve ONLY 100 characters[/code]

Alternatively, you can abstract ALL of the database data and use the substr() function to print a portion of it.  The php manual provides lots of examples of substr() use.

[fenway]

MySQL has an equivalent set of string functions as well, depending on what exactly it is that you're doing in the end.

[chico1st]

heres what i have
$query = "SELECT news.newsID, news.pictureID, news.name AS newsName, news.abstract, [b]left('news.fulltext',100)[/b], date.name " .
  "FROM news, date WHERE news.dateID = date.dateID ORDER BY date.name";

i tried this too
$query = "SELECT news.newsID, news.pictureID, news.name AS newsName, news.abstract, [b]left(news.fulltext,100)[/b], date.name " .
  "FROM news, date WHERE news.dateID = date.dateID ORDER BY date.name";

and i looked at these commands and found nothing
http://www.mysqlfreaks.com/mysql_statements.php
is there another manual?
THANKS!
PS the substr() works i just tried it but i figure this will process faster

[fenway]

What makes you think it doesn't work? Granted, you don't have a column alias, so it'll be hard to "find" in your hash.

[chico1st]

well i couldnt get a result from it so i figured the syntax was wrong.. but if i need an alias thats that :D