extract email from string

[fuzzy1]

This is a tough one I know but...

Say I know there are 300 records in TABLE 'emails'
AND that of those records there are 100 in which – somewhere in the FIELD ‘description’ -- is contained an email address (intended recipient of failed email delivery)

Now, I also know that each of those 100 email addresses (for which delivery has failed and contained [WHERE emails.description LIKE %@%]) correspond to 1 of some 4000 records in the TABLE ‘contacts’.

How might I return only the records in TABLE ‘contacts’ WHERE the value of 'contacts.email1' ([e-mail]) is equal to or LIKE the email_string contained within the blob of text in Table/field 'emails.description' ???

or... how might I automate the process of extracting the email addresses from the falure notification (contained in emails.description) and passing them to a new column whereby I may then

Select * FROM contacts
WHERE contacts.email1 = emails.newcolumn

:rolleyes:

[fuzzy1]

Surely someon has done this??

[TobyRT]

This is a bit of a guess, but...

$getfailed = mysql_query("
SELECT emails.description, contacts.email1
FROM emails, contacts
WHERE emails.description like '%@%'
AND email1 like '%@%'
")
or die(mysql_error());

Given that the email address is contained within other text I'm not sure how to limit the selection to that - although I'm sure it's possible.

[fuzzy1]

Thanks Toby,

I do appreciate the followup. Truth is, I have found another way around, which leads me to a new totally stupid newby question which I will submit in another stupid newby post :p

[scrypte]

easiest way to verify an email is valid is to use a preg_match function like so

preg_match('^([A-z0-9])\+@([A-z0-9])\+.([A-z0-9]{3})^',$_POST['email']);

that should return a 1 if valid and 0 if false, it can also tell you if there is a valid match