String truncate on length, but no chopping up of words allowed

Question

I want to limit a string field length in MYSQL on a certain length, but I don\'t want any chopping up of words to occur.

When I do:

SELECT SUBSTRING(         


        

Answer 1

Very interesting problem. Here's how I did it:

//gets initial string - use 29 instead of 28 to see if the 29th  character is a space
SELECT SUBSTRING('Business Analist met focus op wet- en regelgeving', 1, 29) 

//inverts the string, so we can get the first 
SELECT REVERSE( SUBSTRING('Business Analist met focus op wet- en regelgeving', 1, 29))

// find the charindex of the first space (last space in the string not reversed)
SELECT CHARINDEX(' ', REVERSE( SUBSTRING('Business Analist met focus op wet- en regelgeving', 1, 29)))

// get the substring from the first (last) space
SELECT  SUBSTRING(REVERSE( SUBSTRING('Business Analist met focus op wet- en regelgeving', 1, 29)), CHARINDEX(' ', REVERSE( SUBSTRING('Business Analist met focus op wet- en regelgeving', 1, 29))), 29)

// reverse the string again to unfold it.
SELECT REVERSE(SUBSTRING(REVERSE( SUBSTRING('Business Analist met focus op wet- en regelgeving', 1, 29)), CHARINDEX(' ', REVERSE( SUBSTRING('Business Analist met focus op wet- en regelgeving', 1, 29))), 29))


// to try different lengths...
DECLARE  @size  int
select @size = 24
SELECT REVERSE(SUBSTRING(REVERSE( SUBSTRING('Business Analist met focus op wet- en regelgeving', 1, @size)), 
CHARINDEX(' ', REVERSE( SUBSTRING('Business Analist met focus op wet- en regelgeving', 1, @size))), @size))

Answer 2

In SQL it would be...

select Substring('Business Analist met focus op wet- en regelgeving', 0 , 28 + 2 - CharIndex(' ',  REVERSE(SUBSTRING('Business Analist met focus op wet- en regelgeving', 0, 28 + 1 )),0))

I dont know if all these functions are available in MYSQL

EDIT: I think for MYSQL substitute "Locate" for "CharIndex"