Separate First/Last names from Field?

Question

Greetings
I have a table in which the first and last names are in one
field (?) which I need to get into their own fields.
I would create a new table:
CREATE TABLE new_table
AS
SELECT #SpanExcluding(?, ?)# as last_name
#SpanExcluding(?, ?)# as first_name
FROM existing_table; ?
Any help would be appreciated.
newportri

Answer 1

You would use the string manipulation tools available to you
in your
database management system of choice to split the string of
one field
into to values to update the two new fields you create.
This answer is a bit vague, because all the different
database
management systems out there offer slightly different string
manipulation functions.
But I believe your SQL is going to look a bit like this. I
may be a bit
off here since I don't do this type of data manipulation very
often.
UPDATE myTable
SET
firstName = left(fullName,find(fullName,' ')),
lastName = right(fullName,find(fullName,' '))