i'm a news.

but i am trying.

within a certain field (urlref), i am trying to truncated just the everything left of the '?'.

a typical entry in this record for this field would be: ("http://[email protected]")

i know i would have to:

get count of characters in the whole string x

find where ? character is charindex('?',URLref)

get count y after ?

subract y from x

i'm confusing myself.

My sql is not flash but ill give it a go:

;;;i am trying to truncated just the everything left of the '?'.
you want the cars before the ? or the chars after the ?

;;;get count of characters in the whole string x
I dont believe you need the length of the whole string

;;;subract y from x
You can append strings however do not believe you can subtract

This will give you all the characters left of the ?:
SELECT LEFT(URLref,CHARINDEX('?', URLref)-1) from tblName

Wind is your friend
Matt