Query mySQL for special characters

[Anon]

I need to do a query in which the WHERE clause is something like this:

WHERE field LIKE 'abc-X%'

Where X is any character other than a-z, A-Z. The 'abc-' will always be there, but the 5th character could be a non-alpha character.

Is this even possible?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Mike

[mamil]

This, and many more complex things, is possible thanks to regular expression syntax available in MySQL; you should use following clause:

WHERE field REGEXP '^{abc-[a-zA-Z]$'}

REGEXP is used here instead of LIKE to indicate MySQL that we are using here regular expression pattern, not 'ordinary' LIKE argument.
For more info about this topic see Appendix G:"Description of MySQL regular expression syntax " of MySQL manual.

Hope that helps.

[Anon]

That worked perfectly, thanks for your help.