Question

I have a problem I would like to know if I can tackle in my mysql query.

I have a list of “names” in my DB:
id=1, name="name1"
id=2, name="name11"
id=3, name="name111"

I would like to get the id of the name in db with the most common characters at the beginning.

=> name111someignorechar would return 3

=> name11someignorechar would return 2

=> name1someignorechar would return 1

Any idea?

If I use the LIKE keyword,
SELECT id FROM names WHERE CONCAT(name,”%”) LIKE “name111someignorechar”
It will return me 3 results !

Answer 1

Try this:

select name
from names
where 'name111someignorechar' like concat(name,'%')
order by length(name) desc
limit 1