-- Retrieved from http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/string-functions.html at 2015-feb-10 18:16
-- Working on MySQL version 5.6.19-0ubuntu0.14.04.1 (Ubuntu)
--
-- Posted by Chris Stubben on August 21 2008 3:49pm
-- Split delimited strings

CREATE FUNCTION
    strSplit(x VARCHAR(255), delim VARCHAR(12), pos INT) RETURNS VARCHAR(255)
    return
        REPLACE(SUBSTRING(SUBSTRING_INDEX(x, delim, pos),
                          LENGTH(SUBSTRING_INDEX(x, delim, pos - 1)) + 1),
                delim,
                '');

-- Usage: SELECT strSplit("aaa,b,cc,d", ',', n) AS nth;
SELECT strSplit("aaa,b,cc,d", ',', 2) AS second;
+--------+
| second |
+--------+
| b      |
+--------+

SELECT strSplit("a|bb|ccc|dd", '|', 3) AS third;
+-------+
| third |
+-------+
| ccc   |
+-------+

SELECT strSplit("aaa,b,cc,d", ',', 7) AS 7th;
+------+
| 7th  |
+------+
| NULL |
+------+