Question about using LIKE

[Anon]

Hi,

I'm not sure whether this really is a question about LIKE or not....

Is there a way to retrieve fields from MySQL, but have a partial match on the stored data?

For example cold I have 'data%' in the db and have it return if I go for 'data', 'database' etc.? Or would I have to get them all and proccess them with PHP....

Thanks in advance
Oliver

[Anon]

The answer as I've just worked out is the obvious.

SELECT * FROM table
WHERE '$key' LIKE table.word

Imagine table.word contains %game%. It will be returned if $key is 'game', \'games\' 'wonderful games' etc...

Just thought it might be useful to someone....

[[deleted]]

The 'normal' way is exactly the opposite:

SELECT *
FROM table
WHERE table.column LIKE '%something%';

Remember that using LIKE is quite slow because no indexes can be used.