There are too many exceptions for this to be usefull. What about lines ending in cat. or cat, Your example won't match them. Perhaps "% cat.%" and "% cat,%" patterns might be more helpfull, but what about lines that begin with cat?
Peter Lovatt wrote:
Hi
You could use either normal or fulltext searches. Regexp may well be a good
answer (not used it myself). The following should also work
SELECT *
FROM table
WHERE
field LIKE "% cat %"
OR field LIKE "% cat. %"
OR field LIKE "% cat, %"
(note the spaces to make sure you get only complete words)
or if you have a mysql version that supports FULLTEXT
SELECT * FROM table
WHERE MATCH (field) AGAINST ('cat');
http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Fulltext_Search.html
which is much more elegant
HTH
Peter
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-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Goodge [mailto:mark@;good-stuff.co.uk]
Sent: 04 November 2002 11:21
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: select using regexp
Hi,
I've got a problem that I'm hoping someone can help with. I need to do
a query against a text column in order to extract entries that will
match whole words only - for example, a search for "cat" should match
any of:
The cat sat on the mat
It was a large cat.
Cat food is interesting.
Dog. Cat. Fish.
but not match
in a catatonic state
it was a catastrophe
scattergun approach
It looks as if the MySQL REGEXP function is what I need here, but I
can't work out from the documentation how to get what I want.
Any suggestions?
Mark
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