MySQL query to get all characters before a specific character hyphen

For this, you can use SUBSTRING_INDEX(). Let us first create a table −

mysql> create table DemoTable1857
     (
     Name varchar(20)
     );
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

Insert some records in the table using insert command −

mysql> insert into DemoTable1857 values('John-Smith');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable1857 values('Brown-Chris');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable1857 values('David-Carol-Miller');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

Display all records from the table using select statement −

mysql> select * from DemoTable1857;

This will produce the following output −

+--------------------+
| Name               |
+--------------------+
| John-Smith         |
| Brown-Chris        |
| David-Carol-Miller |
+--------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Here is the query to get all characters before specific character hyphen −

mysql> select substring_index(Name,'-',1) Name from DemoTable1857;

This will produce the following output −

+-------+
| Name  |
+-------+
| John  |
| Brown |
| David |
+-------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)