Sorry everyone for not being more clear. The field IS in a multiline varchar field. The example data was all from one record in the table. Unfortunately, this is a database that has been around for many years and backward compatibility with other apps limits redesigning the table. It is a Comments field and this is the first time anyone has ever tried to mine any data from it. My app is a generic report writer that simply takes and query string and returns the results. No processing of the data can be done in the app. I need the result to come directly from MySQL. Thanks again. - Ed
>>> Keith Ivey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 3/24/05 12:04 PM >>> Dan Nelson wrote: > How about: > > SELECT LEFT(description, 8) FROM mytable WHERE description LIKE "%tested this%" LIMIT 1 Hmm, I assumed he was talking about a multi-line VARCHAR, but now that I look again Dan's interpretation is probably the right one. My previous message doesn't apply (except for the bit about breaking it into columns if you're doing it regularly). -- Keith Ivey < [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Smokefree DC http://www.smokefreedc.org Washington, DC
