Question

Stringy: 5/5
Stringy : 3 / 5
3 / 5  Stringy

I’m trying to match two leading spaces on a string, or ignore it if not found. I’ve tried:

SELECT *
FROM testtable
WHERE `file` REGEXP '(  )Stringy(: | : )'

This doesn’t return any rows though

Is it possible to do this?

Answer 1

You need to escape characters which have special meaning in regular expression pattern such as the brackets (, ).

Example with two leading spaces:

SELECT "  Stringy: 3/5" REGEXP '[ ]{2}Stringy(: | : )';
## 1
SELECT "  Stringy : 3 / 5" REGEXP '[ ]{2}Stringy(: | : )';
## 1

and a maximum of two leading spaces:

SELECT "Stringy : 3 / 5" REGEXP '[ ]{0,2}Stringy(: | : )';
## 1

See also the

• MYSQL Docs on Regular Expressions
• Escape special characters for SQL REGEXP