Is this even possible?

[Lyricsride]

Hey there, this is a simple question but i can't seem to find the answer. Probably b/c i don't know what to specifically search for the answer.

I want to query a subset of a text field. In my newsposts i want the "preview" of the text to be shown on an index page with all news posts. I'd rather do this than have to text fields (text_short, text_long).

The concept would be: SELECT <field> FROM <table> WHERE <only first 30 words of the field>


Simple, i think, what concept should i be searching out here?
Thanks guys, really appreciate it.

[Mattyspatty]

i think i understand, you want a preview like:

welcome to my page, some of the text has been removed to make it shorter!
shows as
welcome to my page, some...

you can use this => [url=http://uk2.php.net/substr]http://uk2.php.net/substr[/url]

[trq]

[code]
SELECT SUBSTRING('fld',30) FROM tbl;
[/code]

[Lyricsride]

Thanks guys this is great! Is it better to use php or SQL to do this? I suppose it depends, in my case i probably want to go with speed right? So which should be faster?

[trq]

MySql should be the prefered option.