How to remove part of string in mysql?

Question

In one table of my database I have strings which looks like this one:

sometext-othertext

How to remove the text including dash with SELECT

Answer 1

Return the substring before the first occurrence of the delimiter "-":

SELECT SUBSTRING_INDEX('foo-bar-bar', '-', 1) as result;

Outputs result = "foo"

You can replace 1 with the numbers of occurrences you want before getting the substring

SELECT SUBSTRING_INDEX('foo-bar-bar', '-', 2) as result;

Outputs result = "foo-bar"

Reference: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/string-functions.html#function_substring-index