[RESOLVED] a short way of finding one val in several cols ?

steamPunk

I was sondering if there's a short way of writing

$v = 123;
"SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE col1='".$v."' OR col2='".$v."' OR col3='".$v."' OR col4='".$v."' OR colN='".$v."'"

so in pseudo-code it would be something like

$v = 123;
"SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE '".$v."' IS CONTAINED IN (col1,col2,col3,col4)"

how would i do that ?

thanks

itaym02

Try this:
$v = 123;
$sql="SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE '{$v}' IN (col1,col2,col3,col4)" ;

//run query...

steamPunk

ok - I'll try that

thanks 🙂

itaym02

Did it work?

steamPunk

lol - i haven't tried it yet !

this job is an extension of one of the first database sites that i ever made and I'm realizing now just how badly I designed it and it's turning out to be a LOT more complicated than I thought :/

i'll keep you posted

steamPunk

huh ?! wierd

it doesn't work and when I looked up the syntax for WHERE ... IN i got a big surprse

i found this page : http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/tutorials/sql/tutorial_mysql_in_and_between.php3

which would seem to suggest that it's completely misleading because it's the other way round !!

it can only look for a range of values in just ONE col, like this :

WHERE col_name IN ('valToFind1','valToFind2','valToFind3')

which doesn't seem to make sense at all !

is this correct ? and if so, how can i do the equivalent of

WHERE valToFind IN ('col_name1','col_name2','col_name3') ?

thanks

[edit] forget all that - i was selecting a value that wouldn't have returned any results anyway - your suggestion DOES work after all !!

thanks