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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>UK
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>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Goodge [mailto:mark@stripped]
>Sent: 04 November 2002 11:21
>To: mysql@stripped
>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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