How to Select first 30 chars in a sql query?

Question

SELECT First 20 Chars of(ColName) from DB

Is this possible?

Answer 1

SELECT left(ColName,20) AS First20 /*(Or 30 if we are looking at the title)*/
FROM YourTable

Answer 2

SUBSTRING(ColName, 1, 30)

Answer 3

SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR(30), ColName) from DB

Answer 4

Assuming that colname is VARCHAR, all the above will pad shorter strings to 20 characters.

If this is not what you want, then:

SELECT RTRIM(LEFT(colname, 20)) FROM DB

Answer 5

You can simply use one of the built in string functions. There are many variants so its best to see which one suits your situation best.

Enjoy!