Question

I am trying to query a MYSQL database using regular expressions. I am looking to get the values under columns with this pattern 1234X32X12.

I have written some pseudo-code, but I am unfamiliar with regular expressions, so I was hoping someone could help me out.

CODE:

if ($transposed_array[$i][0] starts with number)
    {
        $sid = regex something /^[0-9]*/
        $gid = regex something /X[0-9]*X/
        $gid = remove first and last character from $gid
        $qid = regex something /[0-9]*$/

        $question_text = mysql_query("select question from table where sid = ".$sid." and gid = ".$gid." and qid = ".$qid." limit 1");
        $transposed_array[$i][0] = $question_test
    }

Any help would be appreciated!

Answer 1

MySQL supports regex matching directly in its SQL commands, check out its manual:

select col from table where col regexp '^h';

(see this at sqlfiddle)