Search single field as multiple fields

[Anon]

In a table, a single field contains a definition of a word, with each definition seperated by ;

So when a search is done against the field to find a pattern, is there a way to tell mysql to break the field apart by ';' and search each item from it seperatly instead of the field as a whole?

[Anon]

You can explode the field value using your ';' and it will put all the values into an array.
Say you have a date field seperated by '/' and you want to seperate the month, day and year into seperate variables:

$date= explode("/", $date);
$month_in = $date[0] ;
$day_in = $date[1] ;
$year_in = $date[2] ;

[Anon]

That's requires the use of PHP, I need to have mysql do this during the query.

[Anon]

have you tried using 'like' as a query term?

say record 5 in 'datetable' has 'month' field with content as:
january; febuary; may

and you run the query:

select from datetable
where month like "%febuary%"

you will find record 5 (or any others that contain 'febuary'