At 11:51 AM -0800 1/7/01, Chadd Nervig wrote:
>I have a large string, and I want to display only the first X characters
>in it. How do I go about doing this? I've tried:
>
>echo LEFT($myrow["fulltext"],512);
>
>But that returns:
>
>Fatal error: Call to unsupported or undefined function left() in
><pageaddress> on line 112
>
>The MySQL specifically lists this as a supported function. What am I
>doing wrong, or what else could I do? If it perhaps is that I've got an
>old version of MySQL installed, I am unable to update at the moment, I'm
>only an end-user, so I need some way to do it as it is right now.
You're not using it in the proper context.
LEFT() is indeed a valid MySQL function, but you're calling it as a PHP
function, not a MySQL function. You have to use LEFT() in the query that
you use to select your data. For example:
$result = mysql_query ("SELECT LEFT(fulltext,512) FROM tbl_name");
if (!$result)
die ("oops");
while ($myrow = mysql_fetch_array ($result)
{
echo $myrow["fulltext"];
}
Alternatively, change your echo statement to call the PHP function
substr ($myrow["fulltext"], 0, 512). See the PHP manual.
--
Paul DuBois, paul@stripped
