Hi Jim,
I think that you'll find that ' ' is treated as a NULL and as such will always return zero.
You are no catering for multiple spaces in the column race_winner.
If you were using Oracle, their INSTR function has an optional argument that allows you to search backwards from the end of a string, but you're not, so my guess is that you'll have to extract the results into an array, manipulate the race_winner column, sort the array, then do whatever is coming next.
I'm not a MySql expert, just putting in my two bob's worth.
Don't forget to LTRIM(RTRIM(race_winner)).
Cheers,
--- Em seg, 4/4/11, Jim Giner <jim.giner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> escreveu:
De: Jim Giner <jim.giner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Assunto: Last Name extraction in query
Para: php-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Data: Segunda-feira, 4 de Abril de 2011, 12:50
having a problem posting this message - forgive any duplication please.
Hi,
I'm trying to use sql to extract the last name from a person's name field in
my table. Here's my Select:
$q = "SELECT race_winner,count(race_date) as wins,
substr(race_winner,FIELD(' ',race_winner)) as last_name
etc.,,,
My result keeps coming up with a 0 for the FIELD portion I assume
since my output shows a blank last_name. From the docs I believe it should
be giving me the right-most portion of the 'race_winner' field beginning
where the first space char is found.
Am I not using this correctly? Is there a better way to do this? I'm
trying to have my results sorted by last name and since the table was not
built with separate first/last name fields, I'm stuck with figuring
somethign out.
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