Question

I have rows such as

• [ISSUE] This is a sample issue
• [WEBSITE] A bug in the website
• Note that this row doesn’t contain anything inside square brackets
• [WEBSITE] Another bug in the website
• [TRACKER] It is not live!
• Some rows will have them in the [middle] but I don’t want them

etc..

Assume the field is called “Title” and the table is called “Issues”. All items in that column start with a string within square brackets. There is no definitive list of what words can come inside the square brackets. no restriction on the length also. I need not get it if the field doesn’t start with such a string.

I want to get the word inside the pair of square brackets and get a unique list of those words.

I want to select a distinct list of all the [XYZ]s. For example, in the list above, the query should return the following list of strings:

• ISSUE
• WEBSITE
• TRACKER

It is a combination of substring logic, and distinct query. The logic might go like Find the index of the first [ and the first ] and get the string between that and from the list, make a unique list. I am finding it nearly impossible to write it in a single MySQL query. What is the query that will get that list?

Answer 1

In that case I would try:

select distinct `Match` from (SELECT MID(Title,instr(Title,'[') + 1,instr(Title,']') - instr(Title,'[') -1) As 'New_Title'
FROM Issues u Where instr(Title,'[') > 0 AND instr(Title,']') > instr((Title),'[')) tbl

Sorry this took so long, I had to figure out how to return the string.