Hi folks...

Can anyone tell me how to limit the amount of characters returned in a query, I need to bring dispaly the first 20 characters only from a 255 varchar field ?

Thanks in advance if you can.

Donald

Depending on what SQL engine you are using the LEFT function may do what you want

eg select left(<mycolumn>,20) as <myColumnsFirst20Characters> from <mytable>
HTH

select convert(varchar(20), <field>) from <table name> should give you first 20 characters from a field.

Or, in Oracle, use the SUBSTR function:

SELECT SUBSTR(column, start_position, desired_length) FROM some_table;
which would then be
SELECT SUBSTR(column, 1, 20) FROM some_table;

If u want to show max 20 characters of all query results, u can change the options at Query Analyzer :
Tools - Options - Results - Maximum characters per column

The "standard SQL" way to do this isThis should also be the most efficient way of doing things since CAST is not a scalar function but a built-in functionality.
Of course, most people will use a scalar function like SUBSTR, SUBSTRING or LEFT, but for one thing these names are not standardised so your SQL becomes less portable, and secondly there may be a performance hit when calling scalar functions.