Replace Part of String in MySQL

Question

If i have data in my MySQL like this

table:

data(TEXT)

foo (hal)

foo (dave)

bar (dave)

bar(dave)

And i want to do This Query

SELECT DISTINCT(data) FROM table;

Now this will return the table as listed above. But i want to do is some sort of replace so that my return query should look like this

SELECT DISTINCT(data) FROM table Replace(data, "(xxxx)", "");

So the Query returns

• foo
• bar

Obviously the data is not replaced because the Brackets are important, its just replaced for the query

If this can be done is there performance pitfals in this

Answer 1

SELECT DISTINCT stuff 
FROM (
  SELECT RTRIM(SUBSTR(data, 1, LOCATE('(', data) - 1)) AS stuff 
  FROM foo
) t;

Answer 2

This worked for me for the above problem. Thanks hobodave, you did put me to the right direction

SELECT DISTINCT(SUBSTRING_INDEX(data, '(', 1)) AS tag FROM table