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Swede
Yak Posting Veteran
74 Posts |
 Posted - 2002-02-12 : 09:02:41
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| If I only want to retrieve a piece of data, for example 50 characters of a text field, can I do that with a SELECT statement?Is there a similar command like in VBScript Left(value, ##)?=====================================Why not try and do the impossible? |
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AndrewMurphy
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker
2916 Posts |
Posted - 2002-02-12 : 09:05:33
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| would you believe 'left'select left(firstname,10) from validuserwill return the 1st 10 characters field called firstname.ps...by text, i take it you mean a field not saved/read using the writetext/readtext commands. |
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Swede
Yak Posting Veteran
74 Posts |
Posted - 2002-02-12 : 09:08:31
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| just meant any field really :)hehe thanks though.... left... well ill be damned lol=====================================Why not try and do the impossible? |
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Swede
Yak Posting Veteran
74 Posts |
Posted - 2002-02-12 : 09:12:08
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| yeah alright, seems you cannot:"Argument data type text is invalid for argument 1 of left function."Crap! :( Any solution? I am doing this in a stored procedure=====================================Why not try and do the impossible? |
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robvolk
Most Valuable Yak
15732 Posts |
Posted - 2002-02-12 : 09:45:09
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| SubString might work on text columns:SELECT SubString(textCol, 1, 50) FROM myTableI tested this in SQL 2000 and it works. I think if you stay within the 8,000 character limit, many string functions will work on text columns as well. |
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Swede
Yak Posting Veteran
74 Posts |
Posted - 2002-02-13 : 04:11:25
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Neither worked.  =====================================Why not try and do the impossible? |
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AndrewMurphy
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker
2916 Posts |
Posted - 2002-02-13 : 04:45:13
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| what if you do it in 2 stages....?declare @abc varchar(50)declare @def varchar(50)select @abc = firstname from validuserselect @def = left(@abc,5)print @def(or the equivalent code that is used to access TEXT-type columns) |
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Retrieving a piece of data