Sorry for the remedial question (after searching here and google and my pl/sql books for 30 minutes)....

How do you truncate a record returned from a query?

I am pulling a zip code from the database and want to get rid of the hyphen and last 4 digits. I.E. 60691-4467 ---> 60691

I don't know why I can't find anything on something this rediculous. If anyone has any helpful links they can give me for good reference for this kind of silly stuff I'd appreciate it as well.

Thanks!

The exact answer depends on your DBMS, but will be similar to this Oracle solution:

1) Use the INSTR function to find the hyphen:
INSTR( zip_code, '-' )
This returns 6 in your example, and 0 if there is no hyphen

2) Use the SUBSTR function to get just the part before the hyphen:
SUBSTR(zip_code,1,5)

To neatly handle the case where the hyphen is absent, you could do this:

SELECT SUBSTR( zip_code, 1, INSTR( zip_code||'-', '-') - 1 )
FROM ...

I think INSTR may be called CONTAINS, and SUBSTR called SUBSTRING in SQL Server.

Sorry Tony.... I am using 8i. And thank you for the suggestions!!

Can you use the LEFT function??

LEFT ( character_expression , integer_expression )

left(zipcode,6)

would give you what you want.