From: Christian Mack
Date: March 26 1999 10:52am
Subject: Re: invoque a user defined program from MYSQL
List-Archive: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/1008
Message-Id: <36FB66F8.DA950C93@compal.de>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

"Claudia M. Castaneda" wrote:
> 
> We want to do string comparison using SQL. For instance:
> A user asks to return all the strings that have 'asmmsg' at the beginning.
> The database has strings like:
>         asmmsgiokl      valid
>         ------
>         asmmsgmlsyui    valid
>         ------
>         asmmsbtusd      not valid
>         -----*
> 
> Is it possible to do this with SQL?
> I have a routine to do this type of comparison in C; would it be possible
> to embed it in MYSQL?
> ---
> Claudia M. Castaneda

Hi Claudia

Sure you can do this with:
SELECT whatEverYouWant FROM yourTable WHERE string LIKE 'asmmsg%'

With LIKE the %-character is a wildcard for everything or nothing and
the _-character is a wildcard for exactly one character.

If your field yourTable.string is a CHAR, VARCHAR or TEXT type then the search with mysql is case insesitive.
If your field is a CHAR BINARY, VARCHAR BINARY or BLOB type then the search with mysql is case sensitive.

Tschau
Christian