title: How to truncate the text returned for a column in a MySQL query
body: <p>I have a table in a MySQL database that I am running simple SELECT queries on (for quick diagnostics/analysis - since I am not running phpmyadmin on the server - for security reasons).</p>
  
  <p>I would like to be able to truncate the returned data using something like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>select id, LEFT(full_name, 32), age FROM user
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>where user is a table that contains the columns id, full_name and age</p>
  
  <p>I tried the above statement and it didn't work. anyone knows how to do this?</p>
  
  <p><strong>[Edit]</strong></p>
  
  <p>Sorry, when I said it dosen't work, I mean mySQL simply returns the STRING "LEFT(full_name, 32)" as an alias for the column 'full_name' and outputs the field value - which in this case, can be as long as 256 chars.</p>