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Development Tools Database Foundations SQL Calculating, Aggregating and Other Functions String Functions

Posted by Joe Hilton
Joe Hilton
Courses Plus Student 4,893 Points

Slightly confused with the SUBSTRING clause in my MySQL command.

The task says:

"Select the first letter of the "first_name", add a period after it, followed by a space and add the "last_name". Also, convert "last_name" to upper case. Call it "name". Example: "A. CHALKLEY"."

And my code is as follows:

"SELECT CONCAT(SUBSTRING(first_name) 1, ".", UPPER(last_name) AS name FROM users"

I'm rather confused with how to combat this situation, so any help would be greatly appreciated

2 Answers

J Donahue
J Donahue
30,790 Points

The number 1 should be within the parenthesis with an additional 1 to tell it where to end. Also, don't forget to close all of your parenthesis. Everything else looks good though. Oh and of course don't forget to punctuate it at the end with a semicolon.

SELECT CONCAT(SUBSTRING(first_name, 1, 1), ".", " ", UPPER(last_name)) AS name FROM users;

Joe Hilton
Joe Hilton
Courses Plus Student 4,893 Points

Thank you very much Jeremy. I got confused with all the parentheses etc, so thanks for clarifying that for me :)

Jim Withington
Jim Withington
12,025 Points

Thanks for this! I kept thinking (SUBSTRING(first_name)1, could work!

Kas Verm
Kas Verm
1,664 Points
Kas Verm
Kas Verm
1,664 Points

This also works and takes a few less characters:

SELECT CONCAT(SUBSTRING(first_name,1,1), ". ", UPPER(last_name)) AS name FROM users;