How to truncate the text returned for a column in a MySQL query

I have a table in a MySQL database that I am running simple SELECT queries on (for quick diagnostics/analysis - since I am not running phpmyadmin on the server - for security reasons).

I would like to be able to truncate the returned data using something like this:

select id, LEFT(full_name, 32), age FROM user

where user is a table that contains the columns id, full_name and age

I tried the above statement and it didn't work. anyone knows how to do this?

[Edit]

Sorry, when I said it dosen't work, I mean mySQL simply returns the STRING "LEFT(full_name, 32)" as an alias for the column 'full_name' and outputs the field value - which in this case, can be as long as 256 chars.