Question

Given my table

id | name
 01| Test Name
 02| Name Test
 03| Another name
 ...
 ...
 nn| Test string

I’d like to do the following, for each entry, read the first word, until a space, so in this example i would read Test, then, find all similar entries which contain Test anywhere on the string, then continue with Name, Another, and so on.

I don’t want to do this manually, as I’ll have to make a lot of queries, the idea is the data is imported from an old excel spreadsheet and the client wants to get repeated names, so Test Name, Test Something Name and Name Test are potential similar names.

Answer 1

Here’s my db solution:

SELECT * 
FROM princess a
INNER JOIN (SELECT 
        DISTINCT CASE
            WHEN name LIKE '% %' 
                THEN SUBSTR(name, 1, LOCATE(' ', name) - 1)
            ELSE name
        END AS 'name'
    FROM princess) b ON a.name LIKE CONCAT('%', b.name ,'%')

This will find the DISTINCT names (before a space) and then JOIN to the original table using LIKE.

You may also consider using INSTR(a.name, b.name) in place of b.name LIKE CONCAT('%', a.name ,'%') depending on how your EXPLAIN looks.