is it possible to do a 'like' in reverse?

mrmigu

ive got a value in my db under the column name, which is vpc, and i want it to pull it out any time that I find a value that is vpc#

so im wondering if its possible to do something like:
...... where 'vpc5' like name%

this obviously doesnt work

I was wondering if anyone could think of a way to do this that does work
thanks

Roger_Ramjet

Not sure that I follow you, try asking the question another way, and include some specific data examples.

mrmigu

im getting data passed into my program describing certain locations. Some of the locations also have a floor number, which is appended to the data being passed in

what im trying to do is find the entry in my db which coresponds to that location, but the db entry does not contain the floor number. The current query which isnt working is name='vpc5', where the entry in the database I want has name as vpc.

Do you think there is any way to match the vpc5 that is input to the vpc in the database without stripping off the 5?

Sxooter

Sure, if you've got regex matching in your database.

test=> create table subb (a text);
CREATE TABLE
test=> insert into subb values ('vpc');
INSERT 2106745920 1
test=> insert into subb values ('xpc');
INSERT 2106745921 1
test=> insert into subb values ('ypc');
INSERT 2106745922 1

test=> select * from subb where a=substring('vpc5' from '[a-z]+');
  a
-----
 vpc

test=> select * from subb where 'vpc5'~a;
  a
-----
 vpc
(1 row)

Note that these are postgresql examples. MySQL supports regexes as well

Regular Expressions in MySQL

mrmigu

thanks. though that isnt quite correct, it put me on the right track