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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