Get all characters before space in MySQL?

In order to get all characters before space in MySQL, you can use left() function from the MySQL. The syntax is as follows −

select left(yourColumnName,LOCATE(' ',yourColumnName) - 1) as anyVariableName from yourTableName;

To understand the above concept, let us create a table.

The query to create a table is as follows −

mysql> create table AllCharacterBeforeSpace −> ( −> FirstNameAndLastName varchar(200) −> ); Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.51 sec)

Now you can insert some records in the table.

The query to insert records is as follows −

mysql> insert into AllCharacterBeforeSpace values('John Smith'); Query OK, 1 row affected (0.15 sec) mysql> insert into AllCharacterBeforeSpace values('Carol Taylor'); Query OK, 1 row affected (0.13 sec) mysql> insert into AllCharacterBeforeSpace values('Maria Garcia'); Query OK, 1 row affected (0.16 sec) mysql> insert into AllCharacterBeforeSpace values('James Johnson'); Query OK, 1 row affected (0.17 sec)

Now you can display all records from the table with the help of select statement.

The query is as follows −

mysql> select *from AllCharacterBeforeSpace;

The following is the output −

+----------------------+ | FirstNameAndLastName | +----------------------+ | John Smith | | Carol Taylor | | Maria Garcia | | James Johnson | +----------------------+ 4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Here is the query that can be used to get all characters before space from the table.

The query is as follows −

mysql> select left(FirstNameAndLastName,LOCATE(' ',FirstNameAndLastName) - 1) as FirstNameBeforeSpace −> from AllCharacterBeforeSpace;

The following is the output −

+----------------------+ | FirstNameBeforeSpace | +----------------------+ | John | | Carol | | Maria | | James | +----------------------+ 4 rows in set (0.03 sec)

The above query returns an empty string when it does not get any space in the column.