Mysql extract first letter of each word in a specific column

Question

I want to create an acronym column in a table. I want to be grab the first letter of each word from a \'name\' column, capitalize it, then concatenate all into an \'acronym\

Answer 1

String manipulation of this kind is not what SQL is designed for, unless you want to write a stored procedure or UDF for it.

SQL isn't really suited for string manipulation of this sort. You may do it somehow but why would you when better tools are available elsewhere? I went on a long search on Google to find such a query statement but I couldn't. Just use the following function to achieve what you want.

drop function if exists initials;
delimiter ||
create function initials(str text) returns text
begin
    declare result text default '';
    declare i int default 1;

    if(str is null) then
        return null;
    end if;

    set result = upper(substr(str, 1, 1));

    while(i <= length(str)) do
        if (substring(str, i, 1) = ' ')
        then
            set result = concat(result, upper(substr(str, i+1, 1)));
        end if;
       set i = i + 1;
    end while;

    return ucase(result);
end;
delimiter ;